


The due South Zombie Radioplay

by kalijean, SLWalker



Series: The due South Zombie Radioplay [2]
Category: due South
Genre: Gen, Zombies
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2010-12-20
Updated: 2017-08-26
Packaged: 2017-10-13 22:02:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 181
Words: 80,791
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/142177
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kalijean/pseuds/kalijean, https://archiveofourown.org/users/SLWalker/pseuds/SLWalker
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Due South Zombie Radioplay is a serial story that was posted daily on LiveJournal and is now being posted daily on Tumblr.  Starting right from the Pilot, the whole universe is immediately thrown on its ear as the undead begin to spread and our many and varied heroes (and villains) have to make their way through this new world.  Assume nothing and expect literally anyone to show up.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. ...the beginning...

**Day Zero**   
_Chicago_

Constable Benton Fraser first decided to come to Chicago on a mission, and he was certainly capable of surviving the airport. The crush and press of humanity, the scents of weary travelers, the vague odors of illness or perhaps airsickness were a small obstacle, and not enough to slow him.

He was, however, willing to pause for the nuns, as well as the frantic young man currently keeping pace with him on the wrong side of an automated walk.

"So, they won't see your little girl unless you pay them in advance?" The concept of such a cavalier attitude towards life was disturbing to Fraser.

"Man, without seeing the cash they won't even give you an aspirin," the man said, his eyes pinched with worry.

"You promise to pay me back within the week?" Fraser asked, looking at the man for a long moment.

"As God is my witness."

Fraser took his stetson off, pulling out the money he had exchanged before leaving Canada and offering it over, "Well, I'm afraid all I can give you is a hundred."

The man looked surprised, but then he nodded, reaching out and squeezing Fraser's upper arm with his hand. There was a mild abrasion on the back of it; Fraser noted these things naturally, but couldn't determine what had caused it before the man took his hand back, relief written on his face. "Thank you. _Thank you_."

"Son, nothing is more precious than a child's life," Fraser answered, with a smile.

The man nodded, giving him one more grateful look, and then they parted ways.

Fraser took a breath, and continued for the front entrance.

There were quite a few people out there, even; still, the air was more clear, though he could note the smell of exhaust, the faint undertone of humanity, the less faint scent of sweat and exhaustion as those who just flew in waited. The taxi pulled up to the curb, and Fraser went to get in when he noticed a woman nearby and offered the taxi to her. "Oh, you take it, ma'am."

By the time all of those standing there were situated, there were no taxis left. And with a tired sigh of his own, Fraser set off on foot.


	2. ...corpse...

What a very strange man they'd given his father's case to.

Fraser supposed 'strange' was unnecessarily judgmental. He was certain Detective Vecchio found him equally as odd, and for that matter, Fraser had felt since he arrived that he'd come to Chicago from another planet, so it followed that Detective Vecchio would be rather outside Fraser's experience.

He couldn't blame Ray for being exasperated with Fraser's sentry duty. Fraser, himself, would've given quite a bit to be able to correct Ray's broad-sweeping application of the word 'entrapment' in explaining whatever it was that had occurred with the 'goomba' in the holding cell.

Losing track of time wasn't something Fraser _did_ ; it never seemed like an enviable ability before.

 _Do you really think I would ignore you if I were not required to do so under orders?_ His sigh was internal. _My apologies._

"...You got a break comin' up soon or something?" Ray sighed. "I'm talkin' to a corpse here."

It was when a tourist couple had snapped their picture that Ray's rather large cellular phone went off.

"Just a minute, Red."

Ray walked off a few paces, phone to his ear. Fraser counted down the minutes until the end of shift.

Approximately 36 seconds were left when Ray returned.

"Listen, I got some stuff on your case we should talk about but - Jesus, did somebody puke over there? Must suck to do this job downwind of _that_. Who'd you piss off? - there's something about civil unrest or a riot brewing or something and they want me at the precinct. If you wanna come back, I can tell you my stuff on the way and maybe you can sneak on one of the computers or somethin' while we get lectured on handling crap the feds'll steal credit for out from under us anyway. How 'bout it?"

...2, 1. The chimes sounded and Fraser felt freedom all through him, stepping off toward Detective Vecchio's vehicle. "Tell me what you've found."


	3. ...diverted...

Something Casey had heard had made him nervous, and for the first time since she went to Regina for Depot, Maggie Mackenzie was temporarily leaving the Territories.

Not to say convincing her had been easy, even though she had two days off. She would have much rather stayed at their cabin, catching up on the chores. There were a whole lot of things that needed done, and she was a practical creature.

But it was pretty rare when her new, equally independent husband asked her for something like this. After their honeymoon, they had settled into a routine they'd built before they were married: She worked with her commanding officer at the Lac La Martre Detachment, Casey flew out and brought back groups of southern hunters who wanted to bag something badly enough to pay top money, and even though they weren't together too often, Maggie was _happy_. She was twenty-three, married to a good man, living in a beautiful place, doing a job she seemed born to do.

Even though her husband had no real definition -- 'just a feeling,' he said -- for why he wanted Maggie to fly with him to Toronto to pick up the next extremely well-paying group, she finally gave in. It was about a twelve hour flight there, not counting refueling, and twelve hours back. She figured she might as well see what those groups were raving about when they came up to her territory to try their hand at sport hunting.

It was after their refueling that Casey started frowning, and Maggie pulled herself away from listening to the drone of the engine and glancing out of the cockpit windows, looking over.

Casey caught the look and offered her a reassuring glance. "There's been some kind of accident at Pearson," he called, over the sound of the engines. "We might have to land in Hamilton and have them meet us there."

"All right," Maggie called back, before turning to look back out of the cockpit windows. Her legs wanted stretched in the worst possible way right now. She was looking forward to landing, at whatever airport they ended up in, even if it was in a city. Hopefully, this group of sport hunters would be as polite as the last group had been.

Down below, the world stirred restlessly.

Ten minutes later, Casey told her that something worse than an accident had apparently happened at Pearson; all flights were being diverted to anywhere else.

Maggie stopped looking forward to landing. Down below, the world stirred restlessly, and now, so did she.


	4. ...flu...

Francesca Vecchio flipped off the radio with a sigh. Two job interviews, and there wasn't anything decent on the radio, just some news program talking about some kind of flu virus that had apparently hit the city overnight. If not for the fact that she wanted to get home and change into something more appealing than the dowdy blue suit she was wearing, she would have called in and told 'em to take some damn chicken soup or something.

Then she had to stop three times along the way because police cruisers and ambulances went flying by her, driving like crazy people.

And _then_ she had to stop because some old man had fallen over in the road. At least there were people helping him, though. She watched out the window around the cars in front of her while people were helping him up.

He didn't look so good.

There was the sound of a siren in the distance, though, so help was on the way.

Frannie popped her gum, then went back to chewing, tapping her long red nails against the steering wheel of the station wagon.

Least they got the geezer up.

She didn't even realize what she saw at first. He swayed a few times, and then she thought maybe he was a drunk instead of injured. Sure looked like Pop did when he got home late at night sometimes.

Until he sank his teeth into the neck of one of the women helping him.

Frannie was screaming before she even realized she was. People tried to beat him off of the woman, who fell to the ground, and he turned on them next, and oh, God, he was _biting people_...

She threw the station wagon into reverse, suddenly shaky, and backed haphazardly into a driveway, slamming into a trash can, as people started running and screaming, then turned it around and laid down rubber. She had to get home _now_.


	5. ...hole...

"Great! Just great!" Ray Vecchio was jamming a rag into a bottle of Scotch. There was a good ten things wrong with that fact alone, and God only knew where Welsh had been keeping _that_ in the precinct. "I'm on my way to a perfectly good bust, wheelin', dealin', working my gangster street cred. Good day, right? What could possibly go wrong? Oh, of course! The guy's got a hole in his shoe, God drops a clueless Dudley Do-Right clone on me! Today I get a guilt trip followed up with a stiff _zombie chaser!_ "

He flicked Gardino's zippo - the poor guy wasn't gonna need it - and the rag went up in a satisfying _whoosh_. Ray lobbed the molotov through the now- gaping hole in the doors, ducking behind the overturned tables just to breathe.

The backdraft was swift.

" _Detective _, it isn't as though I brought these... creatures with me. The word _zombie_ is hardly sensitive, they're likely simply infected with --"__

"--they're rotted, groaning, going for the _neck_ and that last one was missing most of its _face_. They're zombies, Fraser! Do your polite Canadian thing all you want. Go ahead, ask 'em if they need a ride to the hospital. What d'you think'll happen? 'Take two bullets and call me in the morning?!' They wanna eat my brain and I'm tellin' you as a man with finely-honed dress sense that blood and guts just don't go with Armani!"

"I suppose I should concede your point."

"...ya think?!"

"There really is no call to be _snippy_ , Ray."

"Yeah, Fraser, there is! I'm livin' a scene out of Thriller, that door's gonna give any second, you apparently haven't heard of _bullets_ , and I've got nothing left to light on fire unless photocopier toner is flammable! If there's ever a time to be snippy, it's now!"

"There's never-- Oh, dear."

Yeah, really. The door gave with the crash of falling furniture and what Ray could _hear_ was the heave of bodies. It was a Hell of a noise.

Ray shut his eyes for an instant and sighed.

"I don't give a crap about legal, Fraser, take it," he said, tossing him Gardino's gun.

No time to check to see if the guy took it. Ray was on his feet before the throw was complete, leveling his own gun on-- Jesus _Christ_ the damn things were on _fire_ and still busting through the remains of that barricade.

One viable way out, unless he counted heading downstairs. Because nobody with the brains these things wanted would've taken shelter in the _morgue_ , it was through those doors.

How many bullets between them? How many infected? Too little, too many. Ray became aware of Fraser beside him. Looked like he finally gave up on that _legal_ crap. They hopped the table in near-tandem.

Ray took aim at the nearest zombie and fired.


	6. ...radio...

"...this message will be repeated."

The broadcast screeched; one of those hideous, gut-pooling bursts of high pitched sound that usually went with weather warnings and seemed designed to jam home just how powerless everyone really was.

Ray Kowalski would've taken a funnel cloud any day over this.

He flicked off the radio. Seemed like it was asking for trouble, blasting a noise like that. He guessed that's what happened when you stuck people used to dealing with weather on Zombie Warning detail. It was funny how none of the official types would ever use the word. _Affected individuals. Victims. Assailants. Infected._ Just say it, assholes. _Zombies._

For the third time in a half an hour, he released the clip from his gun, re-checking the magazine. Counting by the light that filtered through the crack in the curtains and the gap in the wood. The window was boarded up; whoever owned this house had done a quickie job of it. From the _outside_. He guessed that was probably why whoever owned this house wasn't in it anymore.

God, people were stupid.

Kowalski was no exception. He was the one playing sitting duck in somebody's house, standing by a _window_ , too damn scared to make a decision. He heard the call over police radio. He knew there were survivors from other precincts on the move. Some of 'em not far from here, even. People who could use another set of eyes and another clip of ammo, maybe.

Maybe someone who'd heard of Stella Kowalski.

He couldn't let himself think about that yet. He had to-- had to get nearer. Put his ear to the ground. She was okay. She had to be. She had to be, and that was all there was to it. Didn't do anyone any good to start thinking otherwise.

Sliding the clip back into the gun, he holstered it and picked up the half a pack of cigarettes the poor idiot had left in the house. He pounded the pack against his palm and slid one free, lighting it. Ah, Hell. Menthols. Screw it. It wasn't like he'd smoked in years anyway; after so long he didn't figure he'd enjoy the taste either way. Served him right if it tasted like icy hot.

Shafts of light from the gaps in the window lit up the smoke as it curled away. He flicked the radio back on.

"...remove the head or destroy the brain. Do not allow affected individuals to bite you. Please exit the city in a calm, orderly fashion..."

Yeah. That would definitely happen. He shut it off again.

He stubbed the cigarette out on the windowsill, notching the remainder behind his ear. Slid out his gun and checked his clip one more time. Stuffed the dead guy's lighter in his pocket with the rest of the pack. Breathed.

Tasted like menthol.

Kowalski gave his temporary haven an affectionate pat on its avocado green, painfully 70's wallpaper, and left it behind.


	7. ...love...

"Buongiorno! You have reached the Vecchio household. Please do not try to sell us anything. If you have a message, leave it after the tone and we will get back to you."

-beep-

 _"Ma! Frannie! Maria! Thank God I got through -- listen, there's something really fu-- messed up going on. I need you to meet me at Montrose Harbor. I don't got any time. Please, God, meet me there. The guy I'm with has a plan to get us out. **Don't stop.** Whatever you do, don't stop, don't try and help anyone. Just get there as fast as you can. I love--"_


	8. ...sacrifice...

How the Hell one wiry guy could haul that much ass was beyond Ray.

The blond was booking it at a gait that said he'd been running a _while_. It was weird, how Ray could note that. Hey, he was a detective, he noted lots of things. Just not usually things that should've been overshadowed by the horde of _undead_ on its tail, a horror only trumped by the fact that killing his Riv looked like their only option.

Not enough bullets. Too many to take on with blunt force. Nothing left to make a Molotov. Ray should've known stopping would get 'em both killed. People always died in that part of the zombie movie. It was a fact of life.

Just seeing her surrounded by those things ached in his chest. What Fraser was suggesting...

"Ray." He didn't know how many times the man had repeated his name by now. Fraser just didn't get it. Even beyond his attachment to the thing - and that wasn't for a second to be belittled, even at the end of the world - this was their _wheels_. The prospect of hitting this city on foot was suicide.

So was sitting here, back to the wall all over again, doing a whole lot of nothing.

The stranger was barreling toward them, screaming like a cat stuck in a garbage disposal. _Real smart, guy. Ring the dinner bell. Make sure even more zombies know where we are._

" _Ray._ I will take the shot if you can't."

No time. Now or never. If it was never, it was never for _everybody_.

"-- _fine_."

Time it. Down to breaths. God, he hoped that guy had enough of a head start to keep out of the blast range.

Ray couldn't feel it when he squeezed the trigger.

 

God. His Riv. His _Riv_.

Blondie hurled himself behind their barricade - thank God the guy had recognized an invitation when he was signaled one - just out of blast range. Only half-making it over the cover; that was gonna be some impressive bruising. Fraser shot up and unceremoniously grabbed the guy by his belt and hauled him the rest of the way over, yanking him back and probably adding to those bruises.

Blondie apparently wasn't expecting the explosion. He scrambled back to the wall, flinching and slamming hands over his ears.

The roar died off after a miserable little while, leaving the cracking sound of his car burning and the sound of Blondie's panting in its wake.

"...thanks."

Ray didn't wanna hear it. It wasn't the poor guy's fault. But it was, too. Ray slumped behind the piled up junk, unable to watch his Riv in flames.

Ray could've beat the new guy with the butt of his gun when he peeked over the wall, eyebrows up in some kinda fascination with the remains of the explosion.


	9. ...joke...

"I always knew I would die like this."

It was Mort's little joke. After all, what was death, if one couldn't laugh?

Heat from the fire upstairs dueled with the cold of the morgue. It trapped him there with his new friend. Many times, he had spoken to the dead. Not often had they spoken back. Neither did this one, but the shambling gait and the fetching toe-tag rather did the talking for it.

"No? You did not like my joke? A pity." He gripped his scalpel tighter, wielded like a weapon now instead of an instrument. How very sad it was that the last time he should hold a scalpel in his life should be for violence instead of science.

The being groaned, air seething as much from its neck as its mouth.

Mort's back hit the wall. His scalpel was useless; he knew it. There was no jamming it home, no destroying enough of the brain before a bite landed. Hope had fled where Mort had failed to. At the sound of metal striking hard floor and clattering away, he smiled kindly at the thing. "A greater pity that I cannot study you. You are... fascinating."

He shut his eyes and bared his neck.


	10. ...middle...

"Ray?"

"Ray."

"That's gonna get confusing. What's your middle name?"

"That is my middle name."

"Well why didn't you say so? What's your first name?"

Kowalski sniffed, brushing his nose with one finger, and answered.

"...what was that?"

"I said 'Stanley'."

Vecchio blinked, a slow grin spreading across his face. "Stanley Kowalski?"

"You seriously joking about this now?"

"Hey, did I say anything?"

"Whatever. I'm Ray."

"Sure you are, Stanley."

They were on foot, voices low, each step far more careful than speed should have dictated. A delicate balance between haste and stealth that was somewhat ruined by the argument, even quiet. Fraser had to admit the name issue was a little strange; he tried never to ignore a coincidence but there was nothing to be done for this one.

"Surely you both can be Ray."

"I was Ray first."

"--that doesn't make _sense_ , Ray."

"I don't care. I was Ray first and he was Stanley first so he's in charge of being Stanley and I'm in charge of being Ray, okay?"

"You're in charge of bald and bright, looks like."

"--Ray, Ray, Ray--" Ah. Yes. Well, Fraser did think quite privately that Detective Kowalski may have provoked what was about to happen, but he was hardly going to allow it to occur even so. He held Vecchio by his shoulder, stopping the man from... something. He hadn't known the detective long enough to be sure he would truly have thrown a punch.

A deceptive smile appeared on Vecchio's face and he held out both hands, laughing quietly. "All right, Stan, I'm gonna give you that one. Out of the kindness of my heart, because I'm just that nice a guy. And because if I make you shriek like you did running from those zombies, we're gonna have a whole lot of 'em on us real fast. I wanna keep my skin. Pretty sure you wanna hold onto yours, too. Keep that in mind, funny guy, and we'll get along just great."

Whatever bluster Kowalski wanted to throw back at Vecchio seemed to die on the realization that he really would draw infected if he made too much noise, so it was with a quiet snarl that the man broke off.

Vecchio gave a nod of 'thought so' and picked the pace back up.

"Stan," Kowalski muttered after a while.

"Huh?"

"Stan. If-- if you've got to-- Stan. Not Stanley. All right?"

Fraser looked between the two men. Vecchio seemed to soften at that, sighing. "Yeah. Sure, pal."


	11. ...moonlight...

"This is a bad idea."

 _"Ssh."_

"No, I'm serious. This is a really, really bad idea."

"Too late, Stanley, so shut up and keep back!"

"That's it, Vecchio, I'm havin' a piece of you--"

"Oh, you _wish_ , pal."

"--I'm gonna rip the rest of that hair right off your shiny head--"

Benton Fraser shoved himself firmly - _quietly_ \- between the two arguing detectives, probably a split second before it would've landed him an accidental punch in the face. Both men struggled to get past him for a few sways before giving up, still eyeballing each other in the low light.

"Gentlemen, _please_."

"Who's 'gentlemen', Fraser? You got a Mountie friend in your pocket?"

"I'd hate to see what you keep in yours, Stanley."

" _Stop_ calling me Stanley, Vecchio, or--"

"Or what? You'll feed me to the zombies? Go ahead. I blew up my Riv, what have I got to live for anyway?"

"You've gotta stop blaming me for that. It took out a good twenty of those things, it's not my fault they followed me!"

"Yeah, and you seemed way too gleeful about the size of that explosion, pal!"

"-- _Gentlemen_. This is all very..." Fraser gestured and abandoned trying to find the word. "...but may I suggest we should be more concerned about _that_ particular party of infected at the moment?"

All three of them peeked around the corner in tandem. Scant moonlight revealed the particular gun shop they sought entry to was happily occupied with at least five infected. Well. Four and a half, anyway; how the being was still shambling with so little of its torso intact was a medical mystery Fraser would have preferred not to solve. They were on the run without wheels. At night. They needed ammo. They needed not to get bitten.

Such was the nature of the Detectives' disagreement.

"This is a bad idea."

"Yeah, you said that. Unless you plan on squattin' over there and pulling some ammo out of your--"

 _"Ray!"_

"--then it's this or real soon now we'll be armed with nothing but hoping the zombies get together and decide they wanna give peace a chance. What's it gonna be?"

"I hate you, Vecchio."

Even in the dark, Fraser could feel Ray's smirk.

"Thought so. You ready?"

"No."

"Tough."

Deep breaths.

"Move out."


	12. ...dead...

"If it were me, I'd nuke the whole place. Better get out while you can, son, before Chicago's little more than a memory and ash on the breeze."

"One, I'm already getting out. It's hardly as easily done as said. Two, don't you think that's a little _drastic_ \--?" Benton Fraser couldn't believe he was having this conversation whilst _urinating_ \- not something he ordinarily did outside in a city, but they could hardly be choosy about toilets right now - and neither could he believe that was the first incredulous thought he had. He lowered his voice to a hush and tucked himself back in his pants.

"--hello, Dad."

"Hello, son. Zip up. Anyone would think you were born in a barn." Bob Fraser motioned toward him, averting his eyes.

"I _was_."

"...oh. Fair enough." Bob smiled. "Good to see you, son. Shame about the circumstance."

"Circumstance? Which circumstance, Dad? The walking dead out there, or the walking dead right here?"

"Well, I had meant the incoming nuclear strike, but I suppose the walking dead's a fair point."

"You're dead."

"Hardly a thing to hold against a man at a time like this. If I were you I'd be thankful this dead man isn't after your neck."

"You're _dead_."

"Are you sure you haven't been bitten, son?" Bob waved a hand in front of his face and snapped his fingers. "You seem a little out of it."

 _"Dad--"_

"Hell of a thing, the walking dead. Makes a man feel a little unimportant." Bob looked up. "You might've let my son find my killer before unleashing the depths of Hell on him, hm?"

"Who are you _talking_ to?"

"Good question, Benton. Strange thing, death."

"Obviously. Is there some _reason_ why you're bothering me during a living dead outbreak, Dad, or did you just pick now to drop in?"

"Now, Benton, that's no way to talk to your father. We haven't spoken since Christmas and this is how you greet me?"

"You're _dead_!"

"I don't remember you being this repetitive as a boy, son. Not sure where you picked that up. Your grandmother, maybe. I'll have to have a word with her about that. Another time. Anyway, no, son. No reason. Except the mushroom cloud. I guess that's a pretty good reason. Wouldn't do to have my son vaporized. If that's anyone's last image of you, that's how you'll look here, and then where will I be? Hurry up, son. Get out."

Fraser hung his head, sighing and pinching the bridge of his nose.

When he looked back up, his father was gone.

He slid his hand down his face and breathed out slowly.

"You fall in?!" Detective Vecchio peeked around the corner, covering his eyes.

Shaking it off, Fraser stepped out of the alley. "--'fall in', Ray?"


	13. ...rain...

It was raining in Quick Stop #264.

Fire and rain went well with the ruined menthol behind Kowalski's ear. He didn't know how it was possible the sprinkler system was still working; most places didn't have anything like electricity. He didn't know how the hell the damn cigarette had lasted through running like hell, impact with concrete, slams into walls, exploding Buicks, ammo shops filled with zombies and lighting this place up courtesy of a vodka molotov made from something off the shelves, either. But he thought it was pretty funny that in the end it took water to kill it.

Like something outta War of the Worlds. Only with cigarettes. Or something.

The pair of cops he'd ended up with were obviously _nuts_. Kowalski still couldn't figure out how a Mountie had ended up down here and the fact that Vecchio seemed to think the guy's bizarre idiosyncrasies were more of an inconvenience than the _zombies_ proved they were both certifiable.

They were both uninfected, though, so beggar that he was, Kowalski wasn't into the position to be choosy.

It was hot and the sprinklers weren't putting out the fire, just holding it back. It was a mixed blessing. Kept away the zombies. Might kill them with the smoke. A convenience store was a hell of a place to seek shelter. All windows. It was that or a thrift store right beside with a maze of frickin' shelves and racks of clothes that made the place look like a zombie fish in a barrel shoot.

He'd have been more pissed about the whole fire thing if it wasn't his _fault_. Honestly... he really did think the force of his throw would've knocked the zombie back through the door instead of bouncing off to smash all over the floor. The thing had made a foul, blood-thick noise at him, and Kowalski wondered if the fucker wasn't laughing. The idea of that much intelligence in the walking damn dead made his skin crawl. As if the rest of the carnage he'd seen hadn't already.

Stupid cheapass QuickStop vodka, you'd think the bottle would've been _thin_.

At this point Vecchio had stopped razzing him for all of his fuckups, anyway. Kowalski shook the water out of his hair like a dog or something, coughing, shouting through the sleeve he covered his mouth with. "What now?!"

"At this juncture it may be prudent--" Fraser was still pristine, even soaked. It was like the smudges were meant to be there. There was something off about that uniform. Seemed like a walking advertisement. If zombies even saw in color. Maybe they were like dogs or something.

"We get out or we die." Kowalski was shocked he could hear that interruption over how loud Vecchio's shirt was.

"I believe there is a service entrance in the back."

"Why didn't you say that before?!"

"One, it was padlocked. Two, between fire, smoke, infected, and _Dad_ , a word in edgewise was harder than one might guess."

No time to verbally bitch-slap the guy for being snippy. The two Rays shared a baffled glance from behind sleeves; they both shook it off. No time.

Kowalski's eyebrows went up and he waved his gun. Vecchio nodded; _you take it_.

There was something way too much fun about shooting a padlock off of something. Kowalski thought he should feel guilty about that, especially for wasting the ammo, but Hell, sanity was the least of today's casualties.

Three coughing men and a plume of thick smoke spilled out into the alley behind. The wall was spray painted with white stenciled letters. _BILL POSTERS WILL BE PROSECUTED_. Someone had scribbled _Bill Posters is innocent!_ underneath.

"Back to thinking I'm hallucinating this," Kowalski breathed out, coughing at the end.

"If you are, would you mind hallucinating my family?" Vecchio was doubled over against the wall, gasping.

Fraser, of course, caught his breath quickly. "Hallucination or not, we have to keep moving." He pulled a compass - Jesus, the guy kept a compass on him at all times? - and read it a moment before pointing. "This way."

The Rays shared another glance; exhausted, exasperated, grim.

No rest today.


	14. ...frannie...

Whatever the message was streaked in, it wasn't paint. Not with _that_ stench.

The ragged scrawl raised the hair on the back of her neck.

The color combined with the already nasty wall of the overpass meant there were a couple of possibilities, none of which Frannie wanted to think about. Maybe it was molasses. Yeah. Sure. Definitely.

How she could wrinkle her nose at _that_ when she was beset with the walking _dead_ on this messed up journey was anyone's guess.

 _PRAY  
FOR US_

"You and the rest of the world, pal." It sounded exasperated, tired, heartsick, but she meant it. She'd been praying on a loop since the first genuine warnings started on the news. Harder, louder, when Maria and Tony took off to find the kids.

And because this was about the world's worst place and time to get a flat tire - along with the dumbest time to stand around gawking at a message written in questionable fluids - now she was praying with her legs. Moving as fast as her inadvisable heels would carry her to yank the spare out and get it changed.

Every damn rustle of her own clothes or breeze through the through-way had her jumping, instant terrified recall of lurching shells of people and bloodied lumps of clothing and mess littering the streets. It seemed as though they could materialize out of nothing to reach for her. She was moving too damn slow and scrambling to remember all the times Ray or Tony had showed her how to do this, sickeningly sure she was doing it wrong and would end up with the tire flying off to leave her a sitting duck in the middle of a busy street or something.

Swearing. There was lots of hushed swearing which was a nice contradiction to the running prayer in her mind.

When something skittered by, she shrieked without shame, slamming back up against the station wagon and wielding the tire iron like a club.

The cat was injured, streaking scared, and soaking wet. It didn't approach her. Frannie didn't know if she could've moved at that moment if it had. It just bolted off, and knowing full well it was a stupid thing to do, she shut her eyes to breathe.

"Sorry, kitty." It was just above a whisper. Turning, she kicked the tire like it might tell her whether her spare job would fall off, and she left the flat where it was. Littering was the least of her worries about now.

Higher up on the list was the waning amount gas the station wagon had in it. That was gonna become a problem real quick if too many of the usual routes were blocked; taking roads had already proved to be a dumb idea, but nothing terrified her more than being on foot. At least in this thing she was in a moving weapon. There were already zombie-dents in the hood. Frannie didn't figure resale value was a concern for this thing anymore.

She hoped Ray knew what he was doing. Hoped he could gas this barge when she found him. Hoped he was still alive to do it.

Hoped Maria and Tony got out, too.

And Ma?

Clenching the steering wheel, Francesca shut her eyes, praying for her mother's soul.

The road was blurry when she turned the key, and she blinked away the tears as she booked it for the rendezvous point.


	15. ...up...

She dialed again and again, when the first real screams of sirens started up and then... kept starting up, near and far. She dialed and dialed and it rang, and then there was a constant busy signal, and now...

Stella Kowalski sat shivering on top of the office building, and watched Chicago fall apart. Sometimes she saw living people. Sometimes she even screamed to them. They never looked her way. They just ran.

Sometimes she saw the dead.

She had looked at every wiry blond who ran or shambled down the road. She never knew how many there were in the city of Chicago before now. Like Ray had always been the only one, until Ray wasn't there anymore. Then, they were everywhere. Eight stories down, any one of them could have been him. None of them could have been him.

Maybe they were all him, and that's why he hadn't answered the phone, when the phones still worked.

Stella sat shivering on top of the office building, and watched the curls of smoke illuminated from the bottom by fire, and she saw less and less of the living and more and more of the dead from eight stories up, when the lights actually flickered on. The news had been talking about some kind of mutated flu.

They never knew that what was happening was the end of the world.

Everyone had gotten nervous inside, when the first group of people were running for their lives past the windows. Everyone had panicked inside when they saw what followed.

When what followed came through the windows, Stella went up. There was no way she could get through them, so she went up. Apparently, they couldn't follow her up here, where the April wind cut through her business suit. She knew, though, that they were still down there, and she could see them below. Hundreds. Maybe thousands.

Somewhere not too far away, something exploded and she jumped.

She tried dialing again.

Nothing but empty static on a dying battery answered in the dark.


	16. ...ray...

Her brother was warm and safe and _filthy_ and felt like home and somehow that just shattered her.

God knew how she had been lucky enough to find them on the way to the rendezvous, through roads blocked by bodies or cars, with blocks more between them and whatever plan was supposed to save them.

Francesca's tears were soaking into Armani and dirt and God-knows-what. There was blood and mess all over her. Two guys that had apparently stuck to Ray were trying to look like they weren't watching. She could barely breathe for how tightly Ray held her, but she didn't care about any of it. His arms were safe.

"Maria?"

"Went to find the kids at school." She felt the hitch in Ray's breath. Both of them knew what that meant. According to the radio - it was still broadcasting, somehow, and the transmission droned from the station wagon's speakers - that was one of the many parts of the city completely overtaken. Going in was suicide. The likelihood they'd gotten back out...

"Ma?"

Frannie damn near bit through her lip to keep back the sob. She just shook her head against his chest.

"Ah, _God_..."

How it was Ray could can tears in the face of all this, Francesca didn't know, but she let go of her sobbing on that, clutching at his suit jacket.

The radio looped through the droning message twice before someone thought to shut off the car. She felt a touch to her shoulder; she and Ray jumped simultaneously, ready to swing and beat whatever thing from Hell dared encroach on them _now_ to a greasespot on the pavement.

The stranger in uniform shushed quietly. Horrified that anyone would... could interrupt right _now_ , Francesca could only glare at him in disgust.

"I'm sorry, ma'am," the man whispered, regret written on his face, clearly understanding her anger. "But we really must keep moving. May I suggest we get in the car? Detective Kowalski is willing to drive."

Frannie felt Ray nod, and the breath he shuddered out wound through her hair.

She staggered on her ruined heels to curl up in the backseat, ignoring the little voice that should have sounded like her mother when it insisted she should buckle up. She grabbed hold of Ray in desperation as soon as he was in, shattering all over again before the car even started.

The strangers in the front spoke hurriedly, hushed. Probably trying to figure out how they were gonna fill this whale up with gas, 'cause they weren't going far on what was left. She didn't care what they were saying. Even if they could find gas, Frannie didn't know what the plan would be. Where they were headed or why. What was the point? She'd come this far. Nothing else mattered. Nothing except Ray.

The blond was a shit driver. Maybe it was just the _apocalypse_ , maybe he wasn't so bad on a normal day, but this thing's suspension sucked and every bump in the road made the sobs ache more. She didn't care about that either.

Somewhere along the bouncing, aching line, she felt a trickle of wet in her hair.

Ray was crying silently.

The world really had gone to Hell.


	17. ...siphon...

_Come on... come on..._

They were siphoning from an abandoned piece of crap sedan. Didn't feel like it was gonna be much, and an empty two-liter was not the best gas can, but Hell, it would have to do. Kowalski spat as soon as he got it flowing; that crap burned, and knowing his luck, he'd have an absent minded moment, light up a cigarette and do his best impression of a blond, blue-eyed dragon.

He wiped his mouth with his sleeve - oh, that would be fun for paranoia the next time he lit a molotov - and kept spitting, coughing now and again.

Breathing was _fun_. He made short work of it. Between this and the pickup truck they'd have enough to get... get wherever it was Fraser was dragging 'em. North. Something about getting on the water. Made sense, he guessed.

The situation got more surreal as the day went on. Fraser kept talking to himself when he thought no one was listening. Vecchio had gone dead quiet; Kowalski didn't start out figuring he'd miss the guy's ranting, but that station wagon got way too damn quiet without it. Vecchio's sister kept breaking back down in tears. Kowalski couldn't grudge her that; Hell, most of the time, that was all he wanted to do. But a crying girl would have most guys on edge. Made him wanna _fix it_. There was no fixing any of this, and if he was going to be a selfish bastard, it just reminded him that Stella was out there somewhere, too.

He pinched off the hose and handed over the bottle to Fraser before filling up a second.

The further away they got, the more Stella stole into his thoughts.

These people might've been law enforcement, but they hadn't heard of her. Vecchio thought he'd heard the name somewhere but that could've been media coverage. Stella was good at what she did. Wasn't strange for her to have a reputation.

Every second that ticked by was a second more likely she was-- was--

Ugh.

She had to be alive. Didn't look like he was gonna be her cop in shiny armor, though. Kowalski didn't know why he thought he could find a needle in this fucked up haystack. It was just a _given_. They were put on this planet to be with each other. What the Hell was he for, if not saving her during the frickin' _apocalypse?_

'Hey Stella. With all these zombies around, kinda makes you wanna rethink the separation, huh?'

Kowalski slumped against the sedan, watching the gas taper off to a drip into the container. The more he thought about it the more panicked he got. He couldn't just leave her. Couldn't just give up. Ditching the others was probably suicide, but he didn't have the first clue where she was. Last word was, her office building was in one of the verboten parts of the city. Which meant she wasn't in it at the time. That was all there was to it.

He spat again, and tipped his head to the sky.

\--Jesus Christ.

Fraser was watching it, too; Kowalski wasn't crazy. There really was something really wrong about that plane's traje-- trigec-- that plane's flight path, veering weird and low, _close_ , definitely--

It disappeared behind the skyline.

It was weird, how everything could seem silent even with car alarms blaring in the distance. Fraser and Kowalski shared a look.

Maybe-- maybe...

He capped the second two-liter and passed it over. Quietly. Barely breathing, like he might set something horrible off.

The roar of a crash came two seconds after he'd reassured himself it wouldn't happen. Far off. No threat to them, but not far off enough for anyone's sanity.

All four of 'em jumped, the two figures in the back still pressed close together. Frannie started sobbing again; Kowalski didn't need to hear it to know it.


	18. ...draw...

There was a seething mass of bodies between them and the harbor that might or might not be their salvation.

Ray Vecchio hadn't seen a living person in a long time now, and something in him felt as burned out as the city was going to be by tomorrow morning. Even Frannie had quit crying when the last zombie to bounce off of the station wagon broke the already badly cracked windshield before rolling off.

A glance behind showed them following. And a glance ahead showed them already there.

"Whose plan was this?" Kowalski asked, a hissed, frantic sound.

"Mine, I'm afraid," Fraser said, the light of a car on fire dancing across his solemn face. At least Kowalski showed some good sense and had slowed the car down enough to creep under the underpass and see what they were facing.

There were at least hundreds. Maybe more. Run up against the lakeshore like they ran out of room to walk and didn't know where else to go.

"We got zombies behind us, zombies in front of us, we're almost out of ammo again and you thought going to the beach was the answer?" Kowalski asked, but there wasn't actually much anger in the tone. Something more like resignation.

"I can draw 'em off," Ray said. His own voice sounded distant. "I can draw 'em off."

"Like Hell you will," Frannie snapped, glaring at him through smudged mascara.

"Yeah, Vecchio, like Hell you will," Kowalski added, rolling his head on his shoulders. "We'll think of something. Right, Fraser? We'll think of something."

Fraser was clearly calculating possibilities. "I don't believe this car will be able to plow through them. However, there is that truck over there; it may be enough."

Ray made the mistake of looking behind them. In the eerie, torn light, he could see the shadows moving. "We don't got a lot of time to think about this, people."

"...is that a cruiser?" Kowalski asked, squinting, then he whipped out his dorky-looking glasses and put them on. "Shit. I've got an idea."

"Sometime today," Frannie said, shaking like a leaf beside Ray and still sounding more fierce than he'd ever heard her.

"One of us breaks for the cruiser and turns on the siren. Draw 'em away."

Fraser didn't wait for them to decide on who. "Keep an eye out for me from off the shoreline, northwards!" He opened the door and was out of the car before anyone could stop him, slamming it behind him, and running so fast that he was a flash of fire-lit red.

"Shit! Fraser!" Kowalski yelled, then slammed a fist into the steering wheel, at the exact same time Ray was reaching for the door to follow the Mountie out.


	19. ...mercy...

_Here you go,_ said the man. Even through what appeared to be tears, Diefenbaker was able to read that. The human was injured. Bleeding from the arm.

This expression of emotion, Diefenbaker understood. The world smelled wrong. Were he capable of tears, he would cry for it as well.

The man unlatched Diefenbaker's cage, swinging the door wide. He wore a uniform. Diefenbaker wondered if he, too, was an officer of the law. There was a flicker of hope that perhaps Benton had come for him. Dief couldn't smell his human, however. Everything smelled of death, including this strange man fiddling with his prison. He smelled of the certainty of passing. Of fear, sweat, fire and tears.

Diefenbaker bounded from his prison, stopping to regard the man as he slumped to the ground. Other animals milled in the room; their scents did nothing to override the stench of fear. It permeated the entire human dwelling for miles. It cloyed in Diefenbaker's sinuses, burned and itched and covered everything.

 _What are you waiting for?_ the man asked. He was clearly still speaking, but he appeared to sob and cover his face with his hand. _\--dead, don't--_ Another sob distorted his words beyond Dief's ability to read. The man reached out with a filthy hand to pat Dief's head. Warily he accepted the touch; the man still smelled human. Only just.

Dief nudged back at the man's arm. Perhaps he was meant to help? Was he to go to find a healer for the man's injury and sickness?

 _\--go on. I'm dead. Run away. Good boy. Pretty boy. There's a good boy._

No. Diefenbaker's human hadn't come for him. Nor was he meant to find help for this man. He understood now that this was a dying stranger's mercy.

The man curled in on himself. Jerking. Motion that was _wrong_ , that said _sick, poisoned, stay away._

It was with regret that Diefenbaker left his rescuer to die on the floor. Bounding away, he yipped in call to the other animals, oblivious to the sound of their answer.

 _Follow me._


	20. ...infected...

"I didn't get you this far to see you commit suicide!"

"We got us this far." Fraser had no time to worry about his father.

"I helped! A damn good thing I did, too!"

"Someone had to do this."

"The difference being that you're my son and they're not!" At least his father was honest.

No response. No time to look back, either; he thought he'd heard Detective Vecchio dive after him, but then a car door slammed, and all he heard now were ravenous infected. The noise surrounding him was hideous, sickening, _unnatural_ and _moving_ at him. It wasn't often Fraser contended with anything, hunter or prey, that had no concern whatsoever for its own survival. The usual rules didn't apply.

That scared the living Hell out of him.

Fraser reached low in a stride to take up a two by four likely left by someone else trying to defend themselves at some point, swinging it in a fluid motion to knock an infected in the temple.

"Seven o'clock, Benton!"

Another swing and something's jaw tore off with a thick ripping sound, sailing through the air like a baseball to land in the dirt.

He set his teeth, weaving through infected, knocking them back. Something reached for him, touched him -- dear _Lord_ get _away_ \-- it hit the ground with a strategically planted boot, interrupting his stride.

"Six! Great Scott, how do you lose that much of your leg and keep moving--? Nicely done!"

His chunk of wood splintered on the skull of another one, and its seething, death-rictus leering companion was knocked back by a slam of Fraser's fist into its nasal bone. Pain spiked through his knuckles and hand at that, driving the urge to cradle his arm, to shake out the pain. There was no time, no damn _time_.

By the time he threw himself through the cruiser door he'd resorted to simply slamming _himself_ bodily into the last few, forcing them out of the way in the impact.

Door shut and a second's terrified breath and thank _heavens_ the keys were in the thing or it would surely have been his grave.

"I wonder if they can see me."

How on Earth was that man _still_ talking--? "It hardly matters _now_."

"I beg to differ, son. If they can, I'd have made a better distraction, don't you think?"

"It's a little late, and for that matter, can you sprout lights from your hat and whoop at an unholy frequency?"

"That depends on how good an imagination you have."

Sirens wailing, Fraser slammed the cruiser into drive and pulled away.


	21. ...feast...

Thomas Dewey's whole life had fallen away in a matter of hours.

He'd watched his partner grit his teeth and put a bullet in his own brain. The lieu had snapped and tried to punch a zombie to death; the man had been pulled apart in front of his eyes. Two civilian aid workers, one uniform, a burglary suspect, a janitor and a transgendered hooker made up the band of survivors from his precinct. There had been another detective. For a little while. Before she had learned the hard way never to stand too close to a window when you could cast a shadow.

Everything was fire and chaos. There had been a call over the radio. A cop from the 27th precinct looking for other survivors, heading for Montrose Harbor. But it had stopped hours ago. Forever ago. The poor guy was probably just another undead face in the melee.

Dewey's bizarre little band were on foot, now. It was dark. Darkness was nigh on suicide, but they didn't have a choice. Fire spreading had run them out of every relatively safe house in the vicinity, after infected stopped. Dewey knew the surrounding area had to be teeming with them, if only because they seemed to have enough intelligence to shamble out of the fucking way when fire started coming toward them.

They'd kept to the train tracks. An exhausted pack of seven people trudged the overpass. Every soul keenly aware of the fact that before they reached the other side, it would be damn easy to get trapped by infected on either side.

The hooker - she called herself Brandi, they were in the process of booking her and had never gotten her legal name before more important shit came front and center - had long since lost her heels. She was a bizarre sight, dolled up and filthy, fake fur coat flecked with gore, pantyhose ripped all to hell, wearing a pair of fake combat boots taken from one of their brief hiding places.

The two civilian aid workers - Laura and Sheryl - had been holding hands since the first bolt from the smoking precinct building. Their tears had long dried up in favor of quiet horror written on their faces. The uniform, Stewart, had a look of haunted detachment and exhaustion. He hefted half their bag of weaponry. Dewey carted the other half. The janitor was a wiry guy called Steve with thick glasses and greasy hair who was prone to sudden fits of hysterical crying, but Dewey had watched the guy take out three zombies, swinging a stolen baseball bat while sobbing like a girl, so he wasn't gonna grudge the guy his tears. The burglary suspect wasn't much more than a kid, no older than eighteen, if that. But he'd refused to give any information. Even now, he didn't give his name. Like this wasn't the end of the world. Like he hadn't been caught in the act, like he could still lawyer up, protest that he knew his rights and plead the Fifth without knowing what the Hell the Fifth even was. Like he might find himself up on charges tomorrow.

Like they hadn't just burgled a whole bunch of houses themselves tonight. Law was just survival, now. Dewey couldn't blame the kid for holding on to some shred of normalcy. Even if it was something so stupid as not talking to the cops.

All seven people stepped carefully. As silently as they could. Shadows rustled and moved on the street below, the slightest eerie light cast by the distant fire of the city; somewhere down the road a way, perpendicular to their little train track, a car sat empty. Doors open, lights on, a beacon in the night. Sounded like the emergency weather alert system was _still_ active. Dewey didn't know how the Hell the system even still had power to broadcast.

Motion from the far-off car door caught Dewey's eye and he motioned for everyone to stop. Swallowing, he squinted off. All eyes followed his own.

The shapes didn't make sense for a long moment; the smallest motion. Maybe his mind just didn't want it to make sense.

His eyes slammed shut. Laura must've figured it out at the same time he did, making a soft, cracked little noise that would've been a hideous sob if they all hadn't learned to cry a whole lot quieter since the outbreak.

Something was feasting.

He opened his eyes and glanced at Stewart; they both knew they could make the shot with one of the better rifles. They could put the damn thing out of its misery. But the noise would draw attention away from the car. Draw infected. Where there was one, there were always more to come.

"Come on," Dewey whispered, looking away.


	22. ...gap...

Two men and one woman were all praying as hard as they could; Ray Kowalski and Frannie both had to hold Vecchio back from trying to follow the Mountie, and given the look in his eyes, watching Fraser dodging undead was torturing him inside.

Kowalski got that. He couldn't stand it himself. You don't go surviving the end of the world with a guy and not get attached.

"We can't just chase him," he said, watching the zombies all pretty much take an active interest in the lights and siren dodging debris and bodies as it wove its way insanely down Lakeshore Trail; they started following. "Vecchio, get up here in the front seat."

Vecchio didn't even argue this time, just clambered up into the front seat where Fraser had been. "What's he mean, keep an eye out for him? We don't even know how far he's gonna go!"

"Guess we steal a boat, go north and watch from offshore," Kowalski answered. Like a walk in the park, baby. At least, that's what he tried to sound like. Like this was nice and simple.

No one wanted to say that it was too dark to really see even a Mountie without some kind of signal. And any kind of signal they could see would just draw the damned undead.

"There are so many..." Frannie said, and yeah, there sure were. They were following the sound of the cruiser, though; even the ones who had been closing in on the station wagon had started after the big, loud, bright thing. "I can't see him anymore."

"Me either," Vecchio said, leaning forward on the glass-scattered dash with both hands, trying to peer out of the ruined windshield.

"I'm gonna wait until there's a gap in the flow and floor it. Ready?"

Vecchio looked around and then grabbed up a tire iron that had been laying on the floor. "Yeah."

Good thinking. With Kowalski driving, someone needed to potentially beat off the undead that could come through the holes where the windshield had been. "Francesca?"

"Yeah," she answered, sounding terrified and determined.

"Greatness," Kowalski murmured, staring hard out of glasses that had one cracked lens, through a hole in a windshield, into the most deadly situation they had faced yet.

Everyone, including him, screamed when the gap came and he slammed the gas pedal to the floor.


	23. ...siren...

"I doubt he has the guts to do that again."

 _"Dad."_ It was hardly above a whisper, even for the siren wailing above them; Fraser's mind was looping through calculations of distance and speed and his father was busy making terrible puns. The infected thumped a second time under the tires, now just a broken lump on the tarmac.

"What? I'd say the situation calls for a little levity."

"Oh, of course! I'm certain the three innocent individuals currently driving for their lives would be very interested in _word play_."

"Watch that pothole, son. Lord, I didn't teach you to drive, did I? No, no, of course I didn't. Another thing I'll have to have a word with your grandmother about."

Fraser swerved hard; it was a choice between said pothole and another body, and out of _respect_ , he went with the former. Both men flinched as the car slammed across the pothole, jarring them.

"Hell's bells, Benton!" Bob Fraser clutched an incomplete stetson to his head.

"Dad, you're dead, it couldn't have hurt!"

"I have the memory of pain receptors, thank you!"

"Did it occur to you that now is not the time for your bizarre posthumous ranting?"

"Did it occur to you, my boy, that my bizarre posthumous ranting is keeping me calm while my son is in mortal danger?! Just because I'm already dead doesn't mean I'm eager to see my only child join me in the hereafter!"

He couldn't glance over, as much as he would've given to see his father's face just then. "No," he replied honestly. "It didn't."

"Hm," was the only response.

The siren filled the silence. Other sounds, too, but those were best not named, even in his own mind. There was a vast gathering of infected in their wake. Growing in number every second. Fraser white-knuckled the steering wheel regardless of the ache, knowing the conclusion of this distraction was rapidly approaching and the likelihood that he would live to see its upshot was slim.

Oh...

"Son--"

"I see it."

 _"Benton--"_

"I see her, Dad!"

The shambling child, no older than ten, struck the front of the cruiser and tumbled over the roof and lights to spill on the road behind them.

The horror of that passed without a word. The road stretched on. Just one more body littered across it, no different than the others.

Jaw set, Fraser was silent when he swerved the vehicle toward the water. Calculating down to seconds.

He yanked a fallen maglite from the passenger side footwell - _the beam from an incandescent flashlight is visible for up to half a mile at night_ \- slammed open the door, and left his father in the still-blaring cruiser. Bolting for water.


	24. ...c'mon...

"C'mon, c'mon, c'mon," Kowalski's frantic litany was mostly under his breath as he tried to get the motor started on the runabout and thanked God that it was able to be hotwired. He didn't look up. He didn't fucking _look up_ because he could hear Francesca praying and he could hear Vecchio panting hard from fear and oh, _fuck_ he looked up for just a second and they were _fucking coming down the docks--_

Most had followed Fraser. But not all. And the not all part was still huge. Lots walked right off the edges, and there were still a ton, and--

"Vecchio, what the fuck are you doing?!"

"Buying you time, asshole, get the boat working!" Vecchio answered and stalked _towards the motherfucking zombies_ with his tire iron in hand, looking too much like a man who had nothing left to lose and Kowalski did as he was told, fumbling, cursing, panicking and--

He heard the increased groans, heard Vecchio's sister shriek once, heard the nasty sound of bone breaking and prayed even as he worked that it wasn't Vecchio's bones breaking, Jesus, that stupid, bald-headed jerk--

 _Calm down, calm down, c'mon, c'mon, fucking c'mon--_

There were tears streaming down his face and every second felt like the last and he kept hearing the thuds and splashes and if that idiot came back bitten, Kowalski was gonna _lose it_ , how could they get this far and lose one of them after all of this and this fucking boat was not starting--

And the motor caught. Turned over. Caught.

Kowalski coulda screamed for relief, but he held back on it. "Come on, Vecchio, RUN!" he yelled as he cast off the lines and all but threw Francesca in there, who came around and slugged him in the arm with a startled noise, but he didn't _care_ and then Vecchio managed one more dead zombie and bolted, belting down the dock and jumping in and Kowalski jumped in and they pulled away from the dock--

It wasn't over. "Are you--?!"

"No," Vecchio huffed, almost sobbing. "No. No. Go. Fraser, _God_ , go--"

Kowalski lit that little motorboat out of the harbor, shaking so hard he was afraid he'd vibrate himself right into the water, and headed around the spit and north, mild waves bouncing them as they went.

For the first time, he realized that he was really leaving the city.

Leaving _Stella_.

Kowalski screamed through his teeth, a raw, torn, soul-deep noise, but he didn't turn back. She was a chance in the city, but Fraser was a reality in the water.

He barely felt Vecchio slip an arm around his shoulders, and in that one second, he wanted to lash out and grab hold, all at once.


	25. ...shadows...

The absence of Fraser's father was both merciful and terribly lonely.

That maglite appeared thankfully waterproof. It had taken abuse before he hit the water, too, striking at the skulls of a few of the faster infected. An effective weapon, when swung for dear life. He waited until the last minute to click it on, grateful in the end that it had, considering the bashing it had given.

The beam cut across his night vision when he opened his eyes. Everything was dark water. Black, inky, grown deep too quickly for any kind of sanity. The thought of the sheer _unknown_ under his feet... surely these things _couldn't..._ then, when one was dead, did one really need air?

If Dad had been there, perhaps he could've asked him.

His boots were heavy with water on each kick. Efficient strokes passed too slowly, propelled as much by adrenaline and sheer determination as any power his exhausted body had left.

The unknown ahead of him loomed as sickly as the blackness underneath. His senses were overwhelmed; the stench of death and burning, the sound of water lapping his ears and his own desperate breaths with every heave forward, vision by scant light of burning civilization and a streak of white from the flashlight. Everything but that adrenaline felt cut out from under him. He felt something near adrift.

\--something--

 

He'd kicked something.

 _You've imagined it. Swim._

 

 

He couldn't have. Benton Fraser knew his mind never played tricks on him.

 _Swim._

The world narrowed to motion and breathing.

 

\--and then he was choking on water. Adrenaline spiked hard through his chest and what was to be a horrified shout was burning in his throat with the water of Lake Michigan. He hadn't imagined it, he _hadn't_ , for what he'd kicked had multiplied tenfold between one breath and the next. He'd opened his eyes to-- to--

Fraser was fighting to breathe amongst a drift of floating dead.


	26. ...people...

_Oh God, oh God, oh **God**..._

" _Fraser!_ " Ray yelled, at the top of his lungs, voice cracked. Kowalski's shouts overlapped, harmonized, choked alongside his. Frannie's, too. They were searching for a proverbial needle in a haystack, trying to find one lone Mountie in Lake Michigan. Thank God they could see the reflected red and blue lights from the cruiser Fraser had ditched, which gave them an approximate location...

Until they hit the first floating bodies.

"Oh, _fuck_ \--!" Kowalski yelled, scrambling backwards and nearly off the back of the boat, voice sharpening to something that cut through the air like a knife.

"Oh my God," Frannie said, soft and broken.

There were... scores of 'em. Bobbing on the waves. Not moving. Just bodies. Not zombies. Somehow, that was even more terrifying. What the hell had killed them?! _Oh God..._

"Fraser?!" Ray called out again, plaintive. "Fraser!"

Kowalski choked on a half-sob, then something in him shifted to second gear and he was yelling right alongside Ray again, guiding the boat as carefully as he could in what little light there was reflected off the nightmare that Chicago became.

Ray's skin crawled.

"There," Frannie said, still sounding broken. Then her voice picked up again as well, and she pointed, frantically, "There! Ray! There!"

Ray squinted towards where she was pointing, but all he saw was...

"FRASER! Kowalski, over there! The light!"

There was only one body thrashing in that mess, a spot of white light that kept turning green and vanishing, and Kowalski cussed under his breath, turning the boat into the bodies. Frannie scrambled into the center, wrapped her arms around herself and looked up at the sky, shuddering as the first thumps hit the side of the boat.

Ray's skin was still crawling, and he wasn't even aware how hard he was shaking. "Hang on!" he yelled, just... he didn't even _know_ why, just because... because that was Fraser, and they didn't survive getting onto the water just to lose him to drowning.

"C'mon, c'mon, c'mon," Kowalski said, and he was shaking, too. They all were.

More thuds. Ray wanted to scream. He leaned against the side of the boat, face screwed up, panting. Reaching. Fraser was foundering; they were close enough to really make him out in the mess, and he was drowning, or losing his strength, because he kept bobbing under the filthy, black water, and was slower to reappear, and Ray fucking _reached_ for all he was worth, babbling half-coherent prayers under his breath.

Fraser went down again.

Ray managed to hook his legs under the seats, and shoved his arms under the water, waving, reaching--

Got him.

With all he had, he dragged the living weight of Benton Fraser back up, tilting the boat, causing Frannie to yelp, and then there was Kowalski, one hand gripping the back of Ray's shirt, the other reaching in with him and they dragged, and Fraser choked, coughed, flailed, raw fear in his eyes. The white light was gone.

"C'mon," Kowalski said, and it was as much a prayer as a plea, voice small.

It took the both of them to pull Fraser into the boat; heaving, trying not to tip it over, and then the water let him go and they all tumbled back, the boat rocking violently for a moment before settling again.

Four people struggled for breath.

"All these _people_..." It was Francesca, at a whisper.

Fraser shot up, draped himself over the side and puked his guts up.

Ray shuddered out a breath, shifting over to lay a hand to the guy's back. After a moment, he heard Kowalski move, staring for a long moment before getting the boat going again.


	27. ...twenty-seven...

Jack Huey managed to make it back to the 2-7 with all of his skin intact. Outrunning the rampage of infected was harrowing; roads were blocked, buildings were on fire and Chicago had turned into an urban wasteland in less time than it took to play out a full Cubs game. But he made it.

The precinct looked as devastated as the city it was a part of. Blood, empty shells, smoldering piles of ruin. Most of the cars were gone. There were smeared hand prints. But it seemed almost eerily quiet, devoid of the dead Huey had been running or hiding from all afternoon.

He knew better than to shout; that tended to draw the undead bastards. His last coherent call had been from Louis, sounding almost flippant as he called for backup, and if not for his partner, Huey would have been headed out of the city. But you don't leave your partner behind, especially when he needed you.

Broken glass crunched under his feet, and he spoke only as loud as he absolutely had to. "Louis?" He peeked around the hallway corner, skin crawling, gun at low ready. He had two rounds left. The rest had been used on the zombies.

Even as he looked, though, he realized that he wasn't going to find Louis, or anyone else, alive in the 27th precinct.

"Lieu?"

Harding Welsh turned around, unnatural eyes staring unblinking, and let out a bellowing moan as he lurched across the floor towards Huey.


	28. ...backup...

_"--peat, need backup at-- ... and Second!"_

 _"...Railway and Second, any units please res..."_

 _...ssssssssshhhhhhhhhh..._

 


	29. ...abide...

Frank Zuko knelt, eyes squeezed shut, too terrified to do anything else.

Low dawn light streamed through the windows of the church. All was silent, save for his whispers. He was wearing a sore place on his thumb, rubbing at the raised visage of his Mary medal. He shifted to the next medal on the strand of beads; he knew them by heart. Saints passed between his fingers. Prayers passed his lips. His life passed before his memory.

Everyone had abandoned him. He'd never been alone before. Solitude was terrifying; the silence of it was eerie.

The smell of a hundred dead bodies who sought refuge here wasn't enough to drive him out of this last sanctuary.

There was no paying for his safety. No one to extort shelter from, no one left who would care that this was Zuko's neighborhood, no one to pay off or threaten or beat. All he had was begging sanctuary from God.

He prayed. And when the shadow behind the window reached out to shatter the stained glass into a thousand brittle colors, he whimpered.


	30. ...black...

The night had lasted forever.

Kowalski kept losing it, Fraser almost froze to death and by the time nautical twilight crept into the sky, everyone was dazed and the boat was almost out of gas.

The night had lasted forever, and Ray lived it by eternal minutes, one motion at a time. They managed to strip and dry Fraser before the cold of the April night and the wet clothes could do him in. Ray spent the night freezing, huddled mostly naked against a naked Mountie, on an open boat, on Lake Michigan, with his sister on the other side, with dirty clothes as pathetically useless blankets. Sometimes, he traded places with Kowalski and they drifted 'cause Ray didn't know how to steer this thing, and Kowalski passed out for a little while until thoughts of his wife tormented him back up again.

They managed to hold it together by God knows what grace, and Ray didn't know if he was relieved or heartsick to see the sunrise over the lake, another day. One day before, his Ma was alive, his Maria was alive, his nieces and nephew were alive. One day before, his precinct, his co-workers, his _world_ was still there, and this was the first new day where none of it was, aside the motley little crew of this boat; one lost Mountie, two lost detectives and his sister.

Fraser had kept it so cool the day before, but something inside of him had cracked because he hadn't been okay since they pulled him out of the water. Through the night, Ray could hear him mumble sometimes, something like poetry, as he kept skin-to-skin and felt the shivering, Fraser's voice rough and broken whispers in the darkness.

Frannie had about fallen catatonic. Ray tried to pet her arm in the dark, where she was huddled on the other side of Fraser, all three of them in the stupidly cramped bottom of the runabout, under seats and scrunched up. She held his hand for awhile, but she didn't say anything.

Now, the sun was up and Fraser was pulling himself back up, body white and black and blue and red. Frannie was asleep, curled around herself fetal-style.

Ray tried to pretend he didn't look for bites. He didn't see anything, though, except the kinds of scrapes that came with being bruised. No clear dental impressions.

"Kowalski?" Ray asked, breaking the silence for the first time since the light came up in the sky.

Kowalski turned blood-shot blue eyes on him, his jaw working.

"You oughta lay down," Ray said, rubbing at his own arms, nodding to the bottom of the boat.

"I can take over navigation," Fraser added, and it looked like he'd put his armor back on with the rising of the sun. "You should rest, Detective."

"Once we land this thing, I'm gonna go look for her," Kowalski said, and it was defiant, like he was daring them to say otherwise.

It might have worked better, if he didn't just sound like something wounded underneath of it. Ray didn't want to argue and shrugged. "Just get some sleep, 'cause we're not landing yet."

Fraser picked up his uniform, but it was still wet. Then, apparently resigning himself to steer the boat in the nude, he took Kowalski's place when Kowalski finally moved, stiff and obviously sore.

"You too, Ray," Fraser said, quietly.

By the time the air had warmed enough to be almost comfortable, Ray and Kowalski were wrapped around Frannie and each other, lost in the black oblivion of exhaustion.


	31. ...duty...

Constable Renfield Turnbull, RCMP, Nipawin Detachment, came back to consciousness to the sound of swearing in a mix of Canadian French, English and Hysterical, crumpled in the back of his own cruiser with his stomach turning and his head spinning and _pain_.

"Guy--"

"Shut up, shut up--! _Câlice--_!"

Guy could occasionally get hysterical, but that was typically when he was drunk, and...

"--oh, God," Turnbull said, as it all came rushing back on him, panic stepping in for pain, and then he was trying to twist around and stare out the back window, and he nearly knocked himself unconscious again when a zombie bounced off of the roof, rolled down the back window and left a bloody print on the trunk. "Guy, what the hell are you doing?!"

"I'm saving your life, you idiot!"

"My _duties_ \--!"

The words from both of them were high pitched and frantic, almost screams, and behind them, Nipawin burned.

" _Fuck_ your duties, Renfield!"

Turnbull couldn't remember entirely what had happened; the last thing that was clear had been him racing to his staff sergeant's terrible cry for backup, on foot, and then everything became fuzzy until finally, there was nothing. Though, he did remember the screech of tires rounding the corner and a very familiar blue...

"You hit me with my own cruiser?!"

"You were running into _suicide_!" Guy shrieked back.

Turnbull snarled at him, wordlessly, then laid back in the seat and kicked out for the window -- the doors weren't able to be opened from the inside, and the cage prevented him from being able to stop Guy from this... this mad dash away from their _home_ , their _responsibilities_ , their _friends_...

"Stop that!"

"Stop the car!"

Guy sounded on the edge of breaking, an angry sort of choked sob, "I swear to God, man, there's nothing left to save."

"You don't know that!"

Guy held up his arm, even as he steered them further away, and the...

There was a piece torn out of it by human teeth.

Turnbull stared and he didn't even really feel the tears starting to well up, shock and dawning realization. Guy didn't risk looking away from the road to say, "I'm going to save you, and it'll be the last thing that I do."


	32. ...one...

Sergeant Meg Thatcher was about to die.

It was funny; she used to lament that the RCMP had sent her to Ottawa to die. It wasn't that Ottawa was a bad place. It was that it wasn't Toronto, and every time she came up for promotion or transfer it was deferred. It had been a bitter little thing to say. One among many bitter off-hand comments she'd been known to make under her breath.

Evidently, she was right. She would never see home again.

Meg's father would have been proud. Even if she couldn't save them, she had conducted herself with bravery to the very last. Literally. She was the last surviving person in the building. No one left to save.

Infected closed in under a rain of fire.

She counted her wasted bullets; an efficient assessment down to the final one. Living dead crumpled to the floor under the skill of her aim. Faces she recognized, faces she didn't. Some faces too mangled for anyone to recognize. Friends. Colleagues. Human beings rendered shambling monsters before her very eyes. They were all the same, now; targets. She emptied the clip, save one. Not enough to save her.

One bullet. One.

Enough for something.

Meg thought about her parents. She thought about her apartment, her houseplant, the glass of wine she was going to have tonight, and her date two weeks from now. She thought about that promotion she'd put in for; Chicago. Diplomatic duty. The booby prize of promotions, but she would've been an Inspector. A stepping-stone to something greater, just the kick-start her career could use if it was done just right. It was a couple of years off at least. Plans. Never too early to make plans.

An infected in uniform bellowed at her. Ragged; concentrated air across vocal cords too damaged to make anything much of it. Spewing blood, spittle and bile. It stank. The whole place reeked. Meg's back hit the wall. Cornered, quite literally.

Meg held her gun close, checking the chamber. One bullet. One.

She thought about her family. That apartment. That date. That life.

Tipping her head back, she shut her eyes, placed the gun under her chin and fired.


	33. ...row...

They were beyond the city, but not beyond the developed shoreline that teased on the horizon, a... safe distance away. It didn't feel particularly safe; an open boat without supplies, occupied by exhausted, frayed people, but it was better than the potential carnage ashore. Smoke still rose on the horizon. And sometimes, the shoreline crawled.

Occasionally, Fraser saw something bob on the waves; more often than not, he couldn't make himself look more closely.

The runabout that they had procured had run out of gas five minutes before, and Ray Kowalski was awake again, staring at the shore with bitter, angry, blood-shot eyes. Ray Vecchio and his sister remained in an exhausted sleep tangled on the floor.

"So, what do we do now?" Kowalski asked, turning the anger from the shore to Fraser, who realized with a dull sort of discomfort that he was still nude; his uniform wasn't dry yet, though he was tempted to put it on anyway.

"There are oars. I believe we'll have to row," Fraser answered, cautiously. "At some point, for the sake of food and clean water, we'll have to return to shore."

"Better do it in the daylight," Kowalski said, roughly, determination all but radiating from him as he pulled one of the oars from the brackets build into the boat's sides. "So, you got a first name?"

"Benton." Fraser stood, stifling a wince as his body protested. He could feel the impression of every impact he had taken on his body as he pulled the other oar free, careful not to step on Ray Vecchio or Francesca. "And you prefer Ray?"

"Yeah." Kowalski glanced to Vecchio, something uncertain crossing his eyes, then he shrugged awkwardly before dipping the oar into the water experimentally. "Guess that's gonna get weird quick, unless I go by Stan or something."

The surreal and grim thought that they could be the only 'Rays' left in the world crossed Fraser's mind, but he immediately shoved it back out. They, and Francesca, had lost far more than Fraser had yesterday. "I suppose that I could look at you in turn in order to differentiate," he tried, an attempt to offer _something_ in light of that thought.

It gained the barest smile off of Kowalski -- Ray -- even as he was trying to row most inexpertly. "Yeah, maybe. Don't know how well that's gonna work, though. Y'know, like at night or whatever."

"You may have a point." Fraser squinted at Ray for a moment, trying to give him a smile in return. "We'll figure it out."

"Yeah," Ray replied, distractedly, squinting himself. But not at Fraser. "Hey, you see that, or is that some kinda mirage-thing?"

Fraser blinked, then followed his line of sight.

In what looked like perfect miniature, what had to be a fairly large white boat bobbed several miles away.


	34. ...coming...

When they'd finally found an open railcar to crash in, Dewey's collection of survivors had jammed it shut, hitting the deck like seven potatoes in a sack. Still, sleep didn't come easy, and they had to take shifts; Dewey found himself staring at Steve across the sleeping forms of five other people.

He'd been reasonably tempted by the flask the janitor had on him.

Dewey was kind of a fuckup, always had been. He knew that. He didn't figure the zombie apocalypse was going to be any different, but when the tired temptation of getting buzzed was right in front of him, even he wasn't really stupid enough to take it. He was actually kind of proud of himself.

Steve drank by himself. Dewey didn't stop him. He figured if the guy wanted to leave himself woozy if the zombies busted into their little haven, Dewey wasn't going to argue with the guy. He just hoped Steve didn't expect anyone to hang back for his staggering ass.

Ah, Hell. That was callous. Dewey didn't know if he really felt it. If he would feel it, to lose another; he damn sure felt it when Lynch got pulled through the window. He never liked her. She'd always been kind of a bitch to him, but losing her felt like a spike to the heart that he still hadn't pulled all the way out.

If anyone had asked him whether six people like these could've been so damn important to him yesterday morning, he would've laughed his ass off.

Sure, Laura and Sheryl. They were from his precinct, they were women, they were scared and in Dewey's world all that made them his responsibility. Maybe it was a little old-fashioned. Maybe it was a little sexist, but Dewey didn't think pretending to be the Modern Politically Correct Male Police Officer was important anymore, what with the end of the world. He was a guy. He'd do the heavy lifting and keep them safe. Let them hold on to each other.

Brandi was another thing entirely.

She still baffled Dewey, but after the first deep-voiced, angry and _quick_ lecture about how she was a _she_ \- not _tranny_ , not _heshe_ \- and there was no fucking time for Dewey to play asshole bigot and they might as well get along seeing as they were sharing a safe house, he'd shut his mouth. The prostitute had a point. Whatever they were yesterday morning didn't mean a damn thing today and they all needed each other.

He still wished he could figure out whether that meant he was supposed watch over Brandi, too.

But Stewart he'd never really given half a glance to. The day before he probably would have told Blue - what they'd taken to calling the burglary suspect, after the color of the coat he wore - to go fuck himself as soon as walk by the guy. And Steve had always struck him as a little weird. He gave off a pervert vibe. Still did.

Somewhere along the line, he'd slept. Stewart woke up to take over, Brandi volunteering too, once the sound of Stewart's voice even at a whisper jarred her awake. Dewey was grateful that he was too damn exhausted to dream.

When morning came, seven people sat in the dark, contemplating the simple terror of opening one door without knowing what was on the other side of it.

"Storm's coming," Stewart had muttered, barely above a whisper.

Every single person in that railcar had shivered at that.

Now... they walked. Under gray skies, not even sure where the Hell they were going, except that they would follow the train tracks as long as they could.


	35. ...casey...

It seemed somehow horribly ironic that the very thing that made some of Canada's most beautiful and remote places accessible was its own curse.

Maggie stood on the tarmac. Casey was bleeding.

Some of the bodies were still twitching.

Refueling an aircraft had become one of the most dangerous things in the world; it was full of hazards in the normal course of operations, and now... now, without ground crews and often without electricity, it because next to impossible. They flew until Casey started looking for places to refuel, mercifully long before they were in actual danger of running out.

Landed. Took off again. Landed. Searched. Found fuel yesterday night, but not enough. Talked to other pilots on the radio, some of them panicked and flying south to search for their families. Some flying north to escape.

It was from one of those that they learned that this airstrip had a truck parked beside the tarmac with some fuel left in it, six hours ago. But he hadn't mentioned that it was overrun. Maybe it hadn't been, then. It seemed that the whole community had turned out, though, now.

"Think it's time to go," Casey said, swiping a red hand across his forehead.

"I can't fly without you," she answered, feeling dazed. Disbelief. As though this couldn't be real.

"You can. You're doing great," he said, smiling. "Didn't even bounce on the last landing."

A sob caught in her throat, and she mercilessly shoved it down. Casey had been teaching her how to fly, but they had been liesurely lessons, just going between Lac La Martre and Inuvik here or there since they started this relationship. In fact, it was one of the first times she realized how she'd felt about him: _Your mother lives in Inuvik? I have a day, I can give you a ride._ No pressure, no expectation she would fall in love with him, just an offer, which was exactly why she _did_ fall for him.

His composure was cracking, even as his blood was dripping on the tarmac. "Maggie..."

"I _love you_ ," she said, fiercely, swiping the tears out of her eyes that had no business being there, and the only thought she had was that there hadn't been enough _time_ , and how damned wrong it was that she had never known she would marry him only to lose him a few months later to _this_.

He pulled his wedding band off, fingers slipping slick over gold, and reached out. "I love you."

When Maggie took off, she had the gold pressed into her palm against the yolk. She circled back once, flying low.

Casey stood on the tarmac with one hand raised.


	36. ...breathe...

The hard slam of what could only sound like a body hitting something behind him had Fraser swinging; a sharp, efficient motion with his borrowed firearm trained on the source.

The gut-ripping horror of what was looking back at him was not mitigated by the blur of condensation, saliva, and gore on the window.

A child no older than fifteen, wild-eyed and twitching, had slammed himself against the window. Two flat, bloodied hands smeared more muck against the glass, his mouth open against it. Seething. He couldn't need to breathe, but it fogged the glass even so. Perhaps it was some muscle memory. A strangely cold thought to have, as Benton watched the clearly starving child claw at the window.

Glazed, unnaturally dark eyes looked straight through him.

Benton stared at it. Heartsick. Panting. He swallowed and dropped his head to look at the deck.

Somewhere, he could hear Francesca shrieking. He breathed and after a few moments, the shrieking gave way to wretched sobs, hoarse and choked sounding.

Ray Kowalski had turned away with an angry, miserable noise; Ray Vecchio stared in stricken shock.

Benton breathed, knotting his jaw, and he could not quite understand why now, after all of the horrors he had seen in getting away from Chicago, his eyes stung for this one boy, who wasn't even alive any longer to cry for himself.

It was several minutes before he hoisted the firearm and made to climb the boat.

Vecchio stopped him with a hand on the arm, his face composed around a pair of soul-sick eyes. "I'll do it."


	37. ...clean...

Frannie wiped at the blood on the window with some window cleaner and tried not to puke.

There wasn't anything left in her stomach to puke up anyway. But even though she hadn't eaten since yesterday at lunch time, food was the last thing on her mind. Water was up there, but mostly, she just cried. Silently. 'Cause no amount of sobbing outloud changed anything.

She didn't turn around when her brother and Kowalski hauled the next body past. There had been seven, in all. All dead, but for... but for one kid. And his name was Brandon, and he was into Metallica, and her brother had shot him in the head after Fraser opened the door to the yacht's cabin.

She wiped at the blood on the window and thought about whether someone would end up shooting Maria. Ma. Tony. _Their children._

"We have one bottle of water," Fraser said, after the Rays had come back, both of them trembling from adrenaline and exertion. Frannie could see them where the glass was clear, reflected off, looking almost like zombies themselves through the splattered gore.

"Give me a sip and I'll be good," Kowalski said, and Frannie met his eyes in the reflection; he was looking at her.

"Yeah," her brother said, and she felt her stomach heave again.

"I suggest we each drink a quarter. However, we will have to... land this boat and get more." Fraser didn't sound too happy. She felt a spike of satisfaction: Good, this boat idea had been his in the first place.

Frannie shuddered at the thought of going back to land. But she didn't know what else they could do. What, collect rain water? Fish for dinner? It reminded her of the fanciful little notions she had before she got into fashion and makeup and boys about running away to the Pacific coast and living off the land in the northwest, spurred on by pretty pictures and her father raging at her big brother through her bedroom door.

"Here, Frannie," Ray said, holding out the bottle of water.

She turned around and dropped the filthy rag, taking it and taking a sip before offering it back.

Best thing and worst thing she'd ever tasted.

"Let me see if we can get this thing running. I have something to take care of when we land," Kowalski said, heading back to the cockpit without looking at any of them.


	38. ...sprint...

They landed just north of some lighthouse that had to be well into Wisconsin, where there were long stretches of trees and the shoreline wasn't crawling. The yacht had about a half a tank of fuel in it, so they could have stayed out, but everyone was shaking with hunger and everyone was still thirsty, and they needed supplies that the yacht didn't have.

Ray had no idea why they were going north, instead of south or east or west, but he just... couldn't think. Life had become one long sprint of horror, and mostly he lived on autopilot. Frannie had gone quiet, looking at him with blood-shot eyes when he handed her a pair of deck shoes, not telling her where they can from. He probably didn't need to.

The dock they tied up to seemed fragile, and how the Hell Kowalski knew how to drive boats, let alone how he managed to maneuver this big boat up to it...

"Stella's good at rubbin' elbows," he said, after a moment. Like that really explained it.

No one commented on the present tense. Or the fact they knew he was going to go.

The steps up the embankment creaked, and everyone held their breaths. Like zombies were gonna come over the top of the hill. Above, there was a patch of over-grown grass, a clearing in all the trees, and Ray guessed it was gonna be some rich person's house up there to have lakefront property like this.

Somewhere after Chicago, the idea of not breaking-and-entering someone's home fell by the wayside to the basic fact of survival. Ray got the heebies thinking about going into some house, but he knew he was gonna have to. They needed food, they needed clean water, they needed clothes and first aid kits and whatever else they could get their hands on.

Ray crested the top of the steps, ready for anything.

And then he nearly startled right back down the stairs, bringing his gun up and strangling off a startled cry, instinctive reaction to sudden movement...

...it was a dog.

Some little ankle-biter with tan fur, yipping its head off as it ran straight towards them.

"Smooth, Vecchio," Kowlaski said, smirking, but he was full of shit because his hands were shaking too from the adrenaline rush.

"A fucking _dog_ ," Ray huffed, with a manic little laugh.

It still hurt his heart when his sister knelt down and called to it.


	39. ...skyscape...

It was a huge house, by Kowalski's standards, and they had to clear _every damn room_.

Vecchio's sister wasn't letting go of that dog and Kowalski, he wasn't a _bastard_ , of course he didn't wanna see the little thing alone and left for zombie food or whatever, but the fact was the damn thing looked like it could start yipping at any second. It seemed like a furry dinner bell just waiting to ring.

Vecchio volunteered to front this little adventure and as much as it stuck in Kowalski, he didn't put up a fight about it. Fraser tried. Vecchio got that lost look in his eyes for a moment, insisting in that hollow voice, and something in Fraser just gave in, Vecchio it was at the head of the line. They'd come in through the back door, in through the kitchen where the most uncovered windows were to show them there weren't any groaning, biting surprises waiting for them.

Whatever family had ditched this place had done it in a big enough hurry to leave a crappy kid's flashlight on the counter, along with a couple of spare cereal-bar things, some bottles of water that had tumbled off onto the floor and the carcass of a photo album that looked like it had been raided of the important ones. Some of 'em were half-torn, hanging in the album like there wasn't time to get them all the way out. It made him nervous, but Kowalski had given up protesting that shit they tried was a bad idea. Everything was a bad idea. Breathing was a bad idea.

They were huddled tightly together in what he figured had to be the longest, darkest hallway on the damn planet. Vecchio held the front and Kowalski pulled up the back, nobody willing to let Frannie hang back undefended. Kowalski's own unwatched back made his skin crawl, and he jerked a look back every once in a while, paranoia raising the hair on the back of his neck.

Each door was quietly nudged open, each terrifyingly dark room cleared by the faint light of a pink Barbie flashlight. Somewhere the thought landed on Kowalski that he would've killed to have a house like this as a kid. Bedrooms and a playroom and _three bathrooms_ distributed across two floors, so he could mess with his hair all he wanted without his mom banging on the door impatiently asking if he was messing with something else. It would've been good. Greatness.

Now it was just more space to prolong the terror of being convinced every bed had a Goddamn zombie underneath. Every opened door, there was a collective sigh of relief, each face peering in turn around the door frame like they all had to check to be sure for themselves. A nervous tic. Nobody questioned it, Vecchio didn't get pissed off at having his judgment questioned or anything, they just did it.

The last bathroom was a full suite, with the nicest claw foot bathtub Kowalski ever saw completely ruined by the residue of dried blood and wads of used gauze stuck to the sides.

In front of him, Frannie hugged the dog tighter, whimpering.

Kowalski guessed that was why the owners left in a hurry. Maybe some hopeless attempt to find help for whoever bled all over the place. Or maybe they were running _from_ 'em.

"Last one," Vecchio muttered, backing them all out of the bathroom, Kowalski turning to check down the hallway for the three hundred and forty-second time.

There was something about the last room that seemed to snap something inside Fraser.

Vecchio turned the knob and everyone's breath held, save the dog's.

Light. Something was _lit up_ which was all kinds of wrong considering there wasn't any fucking _power_. Vecchio nudged the door with his foot and as it drifted open, the dim light of the pink flashlight cut across...

A thousand stars.

It was a bedroom. The room was clear, closet open and a disaster of clothing scattered across the floor, stuffed animals too, the covers on the bed half yanked off like they pulled their kid out of it in the middle of a nap.

The light was stars. A little lamp - looked battery-powered, no cords - sat on the dresser. A dome with tiny holes punched in the surface, it turned at a snail's pace. Skyscape drifting across the white cathedral ceiling, the walls, rocket ship curtains pulled tightly shut, and four tired faces, too.

It was Fraser who drifted in, past their carefully ordered pack, arms seeming to go limp as he watched the turn of the false night sky.


	40. ...stop...

Guy had long since lost track of what Renfield was saying.

It didn't matter. Nothing mattered any longer except the gas pedal and this one stupid, too-decent-for-his-own-good Mountie and how long Guy could keep pressing one to save the other.

"You can't." In bouts of consciousness over the hours, Renfield would raise another weak objection, half-sobbed and pleading. It didn't matter. Didn't matter.

"Clearly, I can."

 _"Stop."_

"No. Shut _up_."

There was another insistent kick at the window, and it took all Guy had not to reach back through the cage and shake the man. Well. If it had been possible, he probably would have.

"Ssh." It was supposed to be impatient. For that hideous spike of irritation, it should have been. It came out some sick kind of soothing.

His arm had stopped throbbing sometime back. Now it was just tingling, numb, hot. Everything was _hot_. It pressed on him like chemical sleep, like the worst trip gone wrong. Like death.

Last night his biggest worry was how the Hell he was going to get thrown up beernuts to go down the fucking drain, and whether or not the wasted girl whose name he couldn't remember would finally pass out. She had. In retrospect he had little doubt that she'd woken up some time later with even less purpose in unlife than she seemed to have when sprawled in his bathtub, very much alive.

Now he was swerving to avoid a sickening mound of clothing that undoubtedly had been a person. Hell, it could've been Mystery Girl for all he knew. The bleeding parcel of duty and intermittent rage in the back seat was everything left of anything Guy knew.

It wasn't so bad, himself told. He'd bounced through life. Left familiarity behind on any whim. It wasn't that much of a stretch to leave living itself behind.

Renfield was kicking again.

Guy swung one hand back at the cage, beating his anger into it. The clang and shock of pain were far less satisfying than he'd hoped. It jolted through the bite on each impact. One, two. Fire in his nerves. Motion. Some way to _feel_.

He didn't look back to see how Renfield reacted. Just shook his hand and put it back to the steering wheel.

"Fuck."

Guy's arm finally throbbed again.

He drove.

"You asked me once, mon ami, if I'd really put _that_ much effort into Depot just to drop out in favor of _sleep_. The answer was yes. I had no interest in telling you more than that. I still don't. What you failed to understand, Ren _field _\-- not _Ren_ , not _Renny_ , not _Field_ , Ren _field_ \-- Turnbull, is that though your name, persistence and disposition have inspired many 'bull-headed' jokes in your time, you are very simply a fucking _amateur_ when it comes to the stubbornness of Guy Laurent. I will save your life. It will be my last act upon this world. _You will shut up._ You will survive. _Do you understand_?"__

By the end of the tirade, Guy was seething and white-knuckling the steering wheel, though he could not feel it.

He waited. The car thunked and rattled, that particular speed bump a red-stained mass on the pavement that Guy didn't want to think about.

No response.

Groaning, Guy slammed his hands off the steering wheel.


	41. ...stupid...

Kowalski plonked down at the kitchen table, raised a butcher knife borrowed from the drawer, and stabbed open the bag of cornflakes. Just because he could. Just because it felt good to cut through something that hadn't been alive at some point. He reached a hand into the bag and tipped his head back, shoveling a handful of cornflakes into his mouth and crunching away, gulping down water in its wake, even forgetting to breathe for the gratitude of it.

Food was a Godsend and it scattered the kitchen table, bizarre combinations of random groceries snatched from cabinets and piled together. Fraser was quietly assembling a sandwich - how the Hell he wasn't packing food away as quickly as he could stuff it was beyond Kowalski - Frannie was trading bites of lunchmeat with a thankfully not-yapping yappy little dog and Vecchio was finishing off somebody's leftover room-temp lasagna with a look on his face like he was a thousand miles away and probably not anywhere near tasting the meal.

Kowalski swallowed painfully around a half-chewed gulp of cornflakes. Carbo-loading or whatever they called it. He was gonna need it.

This house had actually come up jackpot, in the grand scheme of things. They'd managed to scare up two other flashlights, good ones that didn't cast a butterfly-shaped light on the wall, though they weren't going to go throwing that one away, either. More bottles of water, clearly raided by the owners before they'd ditched but not slow enough to get them all. A good haul of food in the fridge and the cabinets. More ramen than Kowalski ever saw in his life.

Jesus, these people were rich. Why the Hell did they have a stockpile of ramen?

Oh, well. Now it was their stockpile.

He stuffed his face full of cornflakes and tried not to think about what came after.

"Nobody else gonna point out how stupid this is?"

"Frannie." That was Vecchio, quiet.

"What? We all know what he thinks he's gonna do. You don't want him to-- to-- _you_ don't want him out there alone. _I_ don't want him out there alone. I'm pretty sure _he_ doesn't really wanna be out there alone, so what's the point sitting around pretending there's a chance in Hell he's coming back when we should be pointing how out _stupid this is_?"

Kowalski blinked a long moment, cornflakes distending his cheeks. Everyone stared at him. Even the fucking dog.

He crunched his way through them slowly before swallowing painfully again.

"Frannie," Vecchio repeated before Kowalski could get words out of his mouth.

She rolled her eyes and looked away from the table, looking a lot like a girl blinking back tears.

The rest of their bizarre meal passed in awkward, aching silence.


	42. ...reach...

She stared at the fingers under the door. They kept reaching.

She could smell it. Death, bloat, bile and blood. Could stare out the narrow window that teased with freedom into the still-cold world beyond, where at least she had a _chance_. She had often felt she would die in here. Parts of her had. But at least she had managed to hold onto _something_. Memory. Poetry.

Revenge.

Something to keep her going, through the unending, unrelenting routine of the days, marking each one on the calender, one day closer to freedom. Just to feel the fresh air and not have anyone tell her where she could go, what she could do, when she could do it... she would have sold her soul.

She was so close to release.

Now, none of it mattered anymore. She was alone, and she hadn't heard another human voice in hours. The last time she had, they'd been screaming prayers and apologies. There might be other people alive, but they were probably just like her, trapped with no possible way out in a place meant to be absolutely secure against escape. No one left alive who held the keys.

No way out.

The fingers kept reaching. She went through the mad scramble in her head. There was a little water left in the toilet. She could... maybe break the window, if she could dismantle her bunk, if it was even breakable, if she could climb down from up here, if... if...

If.

Reality was a different thing.

Victoria Metcalf scrambled around in her head for a way to live, knowing she was going to die.


	43. ...invincible...

Fraser had shook his hand.

It was the damnedest thing, having his hand gripped like that, haunted blue eyes looking back at him. Kowalski had felt like he was dousing a whole basket of kittens with lighter fluid, lighting it, and tossing it into a wood chipper. He squeezed Fraser's hand, lingering on it.

Vecchio had put a hand to the back of his neck, drawing their foreheads together. Eyes shut. It should've been weird. A day ago, it would've been. Just hurt like Hell today.

A clap on the shoulder later and he'd been wrapped around the neck by Frannie, hugging, squeezing her through a sob he knew she didn't mean to let go of.

No matter how many times he told himself that he had to do it, he couldn't shake the feeling that he was the biggest shithead on Earth.

No matter how many times he told himself that they were going to be just fine without him, he couldn't make himself believe it.

Kowalski drove down the backroads headed south for Chicago in his stolen ride, and kept telling himself that Stella was just fine. That she was the smartest, toughest woman in the world, and if Francesca Vecchio could survive, then Stella Kowalski was probably single-handedly cleaning up the town just like she'd been doing before the world ended, and heck, maybe Ray didn't even need to go and find her, 'cause this was _Stella_ and she was... y'know, invincible. Eternal.

He said it a thousand times in his head. Pictured her stalking down the road with painted on jeans and a pair of guns, knocking off zombies left and right and he could almost _convince_ himself that he was going to hit the city limits and she was going to be there, looking at him with a smirk and going, _"What took you so long?"_ There just wasn't any other way it could go. She was Stella. He'd loved her forever, and that _meant something_.

Kowalski drove and he didn't think about Fraser or Vecchio or Vecchio's sister, trying to sneak around and find basic supplies. He drove and he didn't think about how they were willing to wait several hours in case he came back, putting themselves at risk. He drove and he didn't think about how there were bodies walking down the road, or off around the scattered houses, or thudding under his tires, mercifully far less than he'd faced the night before.

He didn't think about the poor kid who had died on that boat.

He thought about Stella. Stella, who would be there, because he loved her and there was no way he failed her now. Stella would be waiting right outside the city limits, wondering what took him so long. Stella would be knocking off walking carcasses left and right, 'cause she was invincible. Eternal.

And somewhere under the hum of the tires, Kowalski could ignore the whispered truth for one more mile.


	44. ...wait...

It felt like the world had a blanket thrown over it.

Ray moved mechanically. Heard things, kept listening for things, but everything else in him felt like it was somewhere else. Maybe Chicago. Maybe the afterlife. Maybe going south with Kowalski. Maybe just gone into the ether, never to return.

Maybe it was 'cause he knew that stupid, fashion senseless idiot was never gonna come back. Maybe it was 'cause he wished he'd gone with, like maybe Maria or Tony or the kids were still there. Maybe he thought he'd end it there somehow.

But he still had a sister and a Mountie to take care of. So, Ray moved mechanically, going through the motions, half-numb and all exhausted.

The house had so much useless crap in it. Just like his used to have. Knick-knacks or paddywhacks or whatever the fuck else. But it had a lot of useful stuff too, like batteries and a couple of first aid kits. Blankets. Clothes. Food. Water. It had medicine in the cabinet, some of which was even useful. A handful of books that Fraser picked out off of the shelves, too.

It had rope and other stuff in the garage. Scissors. Real mundane stuff that Ray had never, ever expected to realize was important. Matches and candles, both. Even the loaf of _bread_ was still good.

Fraser was keeping guard out front of the house, in front of the long driveway Kowalski left on. Ray and Frannie hauled boxes down to the boat. She'd grabbed some cleaning stuff. If they were gonna be stuck with it, then they'd better be able to live on it until the gas ran out and they had to find something else. Looked like she was going to keep the dog, and Ray didn't like that, but he didn't have the heart to tell her no, so he didn't complain when she gave him a defiant look and hauled out a bag of dogfood.

In all, it took about two hours to scour the place and figure it out, get everything they could think they might need or whatever.

"Nothing yet," Fraser said, not looking over, his eyes fixed on the long, empty driveway.

Ray didn't wanna ask if it was about Kowalski or the zombies. He leaned on the porch railing, rubbing his eyes. "We got everything loaded up. You think you wanna go through one more time?"

"No, thank you, Ray."

Ray nodded. Dropped his hand. Looked down the driveway, then back at Fraser. "Fraser, you okay?"

Fraser looked a little pale, though otherwise okay for a guy wearing a filthy uniform and looking like he just survived the apocalypse. He forced a smile that never made it to his eyes. "Just tired, Ray."

"Okay." Ray nodded again, then looked back out over the driveway.

Neither asked how long they were willing to wait. For now... for now, they just waited.


	45. ...runner...

There were a ton of farms, and then there were a ton of houses.

Kowalski stared at the road just outside of Grandwood Park with its five car pileup and bodies laying in the road, still smoldering. Now was _not_ the time to stop, either, 'cause he was just now coming into the world of suburbs and packed residential areas where Chicago started way before it actually officially started. 'Cause there were zombies roaming freely, and while Kowalski had gotten good at judging how much time he had given their slow pace, enough of 'em would be a problem no matter how slow they were.

He slammed the car into reverse to go and find another way, even as a pack of at least thirty was heading for the car, shambling and groaning and dragging torn limbs across the ground. Above, the sky was darkening gray and it was gonna rain, and he did _not_ want his visibility cut down.

At least the logistics of getting back to Chicago made him think less about Stella, but he was so damn close he could almost taste it.

Even if he was only halfway there.

He thumped over another body and managed to get turned around, looking for another way. His stolen ride had plenty of gas, at least.

One thing he hadn't seen was living people. Either they were hiding, or there weren't any. And he didn't want to _think_ about that, but he thought about it anyway. Scores and scores of walking dead, on top of piles of dead bodies, and not one living person. Not in all these miles. Not on the farms, and not here, either. There had to be _some_ living people somewhere. There just had to be. People canny enough to survive.

Like the four of them.

...like the three of them.

"Fuck."

Kowalski hit the gas hard, leaving the shamble-crowd behind him just as the first fat drops of rain started to fall and tried to mentally map another route back into Chicago. Back to Stella. He had to find Stella. In all those scores of dead bodies or walking bodies or whatever, his Stella was going to be alive, and... and...

He didn't see at first when, behind him, four out of the growing crowd of zombies started chasing the car at a _run_.


	46. ...sleep...

It was the closest thing Frannie felt to safe in a long time, and she couldn't even really enjoy it.

No sounds of horrible groans, no crackle of burning fire, no poor fifteen-year-old kids smearing the glass of a yacht's windows with their blood. Just the warm couch, in new clothes, while her brother and Fraser shared guard duty outside. There was _running water_ in this house, even though the stream was weak, and she was able to wash the tears and crud and misery off of her body, even if she couldn't really get it out of her heart.

The dog huddled a little closer and Frannie fought to sleep. What she'd managed last night was so cold and broken that she still felt beaten today, and she knew she needed it. But the rain hitting the windows and the darkening sky as the sun started to go down was terrifying, though it was a quiet and tired terror that she thought might be permanent.

Occasionally, Ray would slip in or Fraser would slip in, both of them looking grim and beat, and she felt guilty for laying down, but they were stupid, stubborn men and refused each time and fine. Fine. They wanted to play knights in shining armor, fine, whatever, she could sleep.

Except, she couldn't sleep. She couldn't stop thinking, jumping, waiting for it all to start again. She couldn't stop thinking about Kowalski and her family and her friends. She didn't even care about that _life_ anymore, just about having living people surrounding her, people she loved, even if they were huddled in some stupid shanty somewhere _safe_.

Frannie always wanted to make it big once she got over her Pacific Northwest dreams. Live in a house like this, outside of Chicago, with a manicured lawn and a four car garage and an espresso machine on the counter. Always wanted to live classy, so like maybe she could not be some working-class Italian girl whose old man was a drunk and a lout. Like maybe she could be a princess or at least a lady of respect, instead of always a girl, always a broad, always a chick or a babe or a cutie-pie.

Now, all Frannie wanted was to live, period. All Frannie wanted was for them to live with her. All she wanted was for them to find somewhere safe. For Kowalski to come back, even though she was sure he wouldn't. For them to get on that damn boat and sail off into the sunset, a raft of humanity in a sick and miserable world.

She cried herself to sleep.


	47. ...asking...

He'd bounced in his seat for no reason at all, white knuckling the steering wheel as the four fucking _running_ dead closed in.

Bouncing. Twitching. Watching. Whimpering. Bouncing.

He could've outdriven them. He could have, but once Kowalski saw the damn things the very concept of _runners_ scared him so damn deep that he had to make it _go away_.

One strategic slam on of the brakes had had four bodies thunking nastily against the back bumper. He had shoved it in reverse, slamming the gas pedal and backing over the fuckers before pounding the gearshift back into drive.

Kowalski didn't have a concept of how long ago that had been. Seconds. Days. Forever. Now he was driving, tears streaming down his face.

Something had snapped in him, somewhere in the ether of no-time after that. No other living faces. Not a Goddamn thing, just the dead, just the graveyard of Chicago, the rain washing the gore off his borrowed car, the distant rumble of thunder now and then.

 _Which one of you is Stella?_

He grit his teeth, still bouncing now and again as he drove. It was in his head, now. Taken root and wouldn't leave and every breath was grief. Fighting with the hopelessness of it, but he had no more fucking denial left in him. The ever-gathering dead had blondes among them. Which face was Stella's? How had she died? What part of her precious, perfect body had they torn away and devoured? What horrific things had they done to something sacred, so purely beautiful, before she was turned?

Had he torn her apart himself, under his tires?

It was the kind of thing he _knew_ victim's families asked themselves. Rape victims, murder victims long gone and only the body left for evidence, dragged up out of the river or an alley or out of the snow and he knew every father, mother, husband, wife, had to ask this shit some time. What the bastards had done to their little baby, their sister, their mother or the person they loved most in the world. He never thought he'd be the one asking. It ate away at him like acid of the soul, and he cried. Sobbed through gritted teeth, snot streaming out of his nose, ugly and gross and a fact of life just like the dead.

Kowalski would never have an answer.

Somewhere along the line he turned around. He wasn't gonna be Stella's cop in shining armor. Her eternal, her soul mate, sent to this planet to love her, to keep her safe. She was dead. God, he hoped she was _just dead_. He wasn't going to be anything for her. But he could be an extra set of eyes for someone else. Extra pair of hands to hold a gun. Not much. A failure of a man, but fuck, what else was there?

He paused, seething at the horde of walking dead that had filled the street he'd come through. Hate, dread, grief pouring out of him. Kowalski sobbed once, pounding his hands off the steering wheel before jamming down the gas pedal, no longer caring whether the windshield could withstand the impact.


	48. ...guy...

The clock stopped in Turnbull's world when Guy put the .38 under his chin and fired.

He'd lasted a long time; hours of driving, getting sicker and sicker. He'd refused to allow Turnbull out of the back of the cruiser, and after the adrenaline wore off and Turnbull had time to realize how badly he was concussed, he had very little fight left in him to plead, rage or demand. It had taken too long for him to stop his head from pouring blood, and everything was dizzying, a swirl of color and nausea and fear and anger and heartbreak. He lost track of time, and in all likelihood lost consciousness a few times; Guy had long been quiet, aside the occasional prayer.

The radio had been turned off long since. The further north they went, the less bodies they ran into, both those walking and those not, and Guy had made certain to have spare petrol packed in the trunk when they had stopped briefly at an Esso along the way.

It had been frighteningly quiet there, aside the sound of Guy breaking the glass of the station's window. Turnbull tried again there to kick out the back window, but he couldn't find any physical strength to do it with.

The last time that Turnbull tried to beg Guy to let him out was to let him find the Green Lake Detachment, if they still existed, and at least try to do his duty.

Guy would have none of it.

Eventually, though, Guy couldn't keep driving anymore. By then, they were... Lord, Turnbull didn't know where. Well north and some west of where they had been -- still in Saskatchewan, but up into cottage country and uranium mines and native settlements, where there were very few people spread out for miles and miles of lakes and wilderness and highways were often made of gravel.

"If you try to stop me, I'll shoot you instead," Guy said, and it sounded wet and choked and sick and exhausted, and like he was trying to make a joke. Then he got out and opened the back door, stepping well back and off of the road, holding Turnbull's service pistol in his right hand.

Turnbull crawled out, and his knees folded as soon as he did, leaving him sitting with his hands braced on the road to stay even that upright. There were no sounds -- no screams, no sirens, no horrible groans, no vehicles, nothing. It was quiet. Wilderness. Peaceful.

He hardly had anything left in him to try to swipe away tears, against the tacky feeling of his own blood dried to his face. "Don't do this," he pleaded, and couldn't even find the heart to wince at the plaintive sound of it.

"Don't make me quote bad movie lines about how it's better this way," Guy answered, flippantly, with a sudden smile illuminated by the light reflected off of the cracked pavement from the headlights. His face, even in the low light, was a shade of some color no human should ever be. "I don't want to die a cliche."

Turnbull couldn't laugh; he could barely breathe. All this time that Guy had driven him mad, and all of the times he had threatened harm on the man... it seemed sickeningly ironic that this was how it was to all end.

"Au revoir, Renfield," Guy said.

In reality, it was an hour before Turnbull could pry his own firearm from Guy's hand and crawl back into the cruiser. An hour sitting in the relative darkness, listening to the engine and the wind stirring the evergreens; an hour sitting there just bewildered and dazed and hopelessly lost. An hour looking at the body of his friend, an hour waiting for the world to right itself. But for him, it was a lifetime and no time at all; the clock had stopped when Guy had pulled the trigger, and the last living connection to his world was gone.


	49. ...king...

Elaine Besbriss should've known an apocalypse would bring out the best and worst in people.

She stood over the body, slugger in-hand, panting. The circle of survivors stared at her by muted candlelight that reflected off the blankets covering the windows.

"Anyone else?" she asked, flicking a look to each standing survivor without turning her head.

No one replied. Somewhere from the corner of the room, there was muffled sobbing.

"Anyone _else_?" Blood dripped from her bat. Infected blood, uninfected blood. The bat didn't know the difference. Right now, neither did Elaine. Sweat dripped from her forehead, the handkerchief-come-headband doing precisely nothing to catch it. "No? Nobody else thinks the end of the world makes them king of anything?"

Elaine wiped her bat off on the unconscious man on the floor. Their would-be king. Her would-be attacker. She had to put down the irrational, terrified urge to beat him to death laying there. Something at odds with the creepy calm she felt on the surface.

This changed things. Every dingy, terrified face in the room reflected it. When the enemy shambled and groaned they could stand back to back with each other and know what it looked like. Even if they could become the enemy at any moment.

When the enemy laughed, smiled, and gave orders...

The enemy was already here.

"Good."

She rested the bat on her shoulder, stepping away from the form before she gave in to the urge to kick it viciously in the ribs. Adrenaline pounded through her. She didn't know what they'd do with the bastard. If she was cold enough to demand they shove him out in the street. If she was stupid enough to let him stay with the group. Maybe there was a third option.

It was when she settled beside the sobbing girl, arm offered, that she remembered that she wasn't king of anything, either.


	50. ...fleck...

The silence had gone cold. The sort of cold that came with the creeping fact of loss.

Fraser felt unnaturally tired. He should have known exhaustion like this. The ragged edge of survival, of fighting for life against the overwhelming odds and the merciless hunger of a predator. He'd lived it many times before, from either side of the chase. This... was something else.

His skin felt prickly. Oversensitive and raw where it shouldn't be.

Emotion had rarely manifested physically for him. It was unnerving; that was an emotion he could normally handle with reasonable ease, if not for the fact that the entire _world_ was a progression of unnerving events at the moment.

His eyes would meet a pair of green or brown now and again; drawn, exhausted, fear in them that betrayed the growing inevitability that Ray Kowalski would be left behind, too.

Francesca was awake again. She'd stopped crying for the moment. Fraser could see the thought in her expression; the back and forth of grief and resolve and Fraser guessed she would be speaking up soon. She had, now and again, since he'd met her. Piped up to declare the blunt, if obvious, truth of matters that required facing whether she truly felt the sentiment behind them.

Benton Fraser was not one for denial. Francesca need not speak. All three of them felt the odds growing thinner as each second passed that Ray Kowalski would be seen again.

It appeared she would speak anyway.

"We've gotta--"

Fraser raised a hand, a gesture of _quiet_. A day ago, had he known her, he might have been surprised at her compliance.

He tilted his head, just listening. Ray leaned forward, eyebrows drawn, and as silently as he could slid his gun off the table.

\--aircraft?

 _"Plane,"_ Fraser whispered, bolting for the door before the word had really left his mouth.

It was hideously stupid of him to run out as he did, he knew it, but the sound dictated desperate motion and he shouldn't have been able to see the craft against the dark of the southern sky, but he did. The craft was military, it had to be, though the fleck was obscured enough that Fraser could not know for sure.

He felt Ray appear behind him, far more sensible; gun drawn. Clearing the area as best he could in the dark, drawing up the rear.

"What now?" Came the whisper beside him.

Fraser didn't know. Send up a flare? The plane _must_ be searching for the living, Fraser couldn't think it would be anything else, but how many infected would reach them by the light of the spectacle before its crew even took notice?

 _His breath caught as he saw something fall from the craft in the distance. A harmless fleck falling from a harmless fleck, for all he could see._

 _It was far, far away._

 _The sound of the firebomb arrived several seconds following the light of it._

 _Fraser felt dizzy. He became aware that Ray was leading him back inside._

 _When Francesca finally _spoke_ , Fraser was unaware of how long he'd been standing, staring off._

"We have to go," came her hollow whisper.


	51. ...zero...

Dewey didn't know the woman's name was Mackenzie King.

He never knew she was a reporter. That she liked red wine, men with blue eyes, small dogs, and planned to have dinner with her mother the night before. He never knew that she hated cops, that she had it out for incompetent government, that she had a habit of sticking her nose where powerful people thought it didn't belong, that she was exceptionally talented at insinuating herself into places in disguise, under the radar.

There was nothing to indicate that she had begun muckraking about a government facility just outside of Chicago. She had dressed herself up as a military doctor; slipped in at the back of a group of them, stolen an access ID, looked enough like her benefactor and projected enough like she had belonged there to go unnoticed with the others. She had stolen documents. Listened, though the paperwork spoke louder than any words. Nothing on her indicated she had shed a tear for the trapped, experimented-upon animal she'd found; that she'd wiped it away before reaching out to pet the animal out of empathy, aching for its pain.

He couldn't know that the nip on her hand had been hidden, concealed as she stole her way out of the facility determined to report the malevolent programs being commissioned there. The bite had gone blissfully, hideously unconnected with the flu she thought she'd gotten later. The fever that finally convinced her mother to insist she go to the hospital. The sickness that had finally started stealing her motor skills, that had jerked her leg on the gas pedal when she meant to brake and rammed her car into others, that had caused a bloody accident.

Well-meaning people had tried to help her. CPR. Holding her bloodied hands, until it was holding her down through an hysterical fit where she had kicked and bitten and scratched for whoever was near regardless of how badly she was exacerbating her injuries. Until paramedics arrived, until she was taken to the hospital still biting and shrieking and spitting blood, even strapped to a gurney. The hospital where she finally died. Where her body stayed until her eyes, now unnatural and glazed, opened again.

Dewey didn't know she was Patient Zero, and neither had the world until it was days too late.

All he knew was that she shambled toward him, dragging a broken leg, missing large chunks of her body. All he saw was another undead face, representative of the end of their world, devoid of life and individuality.

All Dewey felt was tired as he raised his weapon and put a bullet between her eyes.


	52. ...absence...

The absence of light was almost a sickness.

It was not, exactly, the absence of light in itself; it was what could be hiding in the darkness. It was the certainty that a flashlight's beam could draw the undead. It was the fact that he could not drive without his headlights in the utter blackness, and that those broadcast his presence more lethally than his radio did. There was a time he thought he could never be more lost than when trying to learn Nipawin's streets on the quick and on a gifted map from Mike Chase. This was a far cry from that. This was lost, this was loss, this was fevered terror.

The entire world was darkness and disorientation.

Turnbull kept moving through it anyway. There was nothing in him that knew how to lay down and die, not even the sick certainty that a bullet would be far faster and less terrifying than where he was now. Despite Guy's assertion that he had been running into suicide, suicide certainly hadn't been his intention; he was trying to do his duty, but he had fully intended to fight to the bitter end to _live_ in the course of it.

Now... he wasn't always sure if he was alive or not. Or if perhaps he was one of them, drifting half-sensible through an unreal world. He had no idea how to rest, so he kept moving. His thoughts were little more than chaotic fragments, dazed, broken only by the cracked highway and the occasional dim lights of emergency flashers from vehicles left to die on the roadside. Sometimes with their owners in them.

He made the mistake of stopping each time, some desperate, pathetic, last-ditch attempt to be a good Mountie, dragging on every last inch of his own determination. And he replaced the rounds he had to use afterwards with shaking fingers.

Buffalo Narrows was just as dark as the rest of the world, and the reflection of his headlights off of the businesses and homes, weak and covered in gore as they were, seemed more a nightmare he had than anything like reality. A fairly small town, and it still seemed somehow impossible to get to the other side of.

And somewhere in the back of his throbbing head, he prayed to _wake up_. Wake up. Wake up, and all of this would be over.

He crept through the town, not even streetlights or the glowing lights of windows to guide him, all the while trying to peer out into the dark for a service station. The undead remained beyond the pitiful range of his headlights, aside occasional flickers of moving shadows that he wasn't certain he saw.

He had stopped before the bridge, sat in the dark, called on his radio. There was no answer. Had briefly turned on the red interior light of the cruiser to check his old map of Saskatchewan, fighting to get his eyes to focus enough on the fine details to have a plan. Sat for longer still, trying to gather strength he didn't have to go into a place where no one was left to answer his call, in the hopes of finding at least water and perhaps more petrol.

He had no idea where he could go. What he could do, aside... aside survive and try to do his duty, until the nightmare was over. Until he woke up.

Now, he crept his cruiser through Buffalo Narrows, knowing far too well that he was in no physical shape to stop and having no real choice in the matter.

It was with the full knowledge that he might not live another ten minutes that he pulled up to the service station on the other side of the town, on the outskirts, gathered what strength he could, put the cruiser into park and turned off the headlights.

The world became nothing but the absence of light again, and the sound of his own breathing as he clutched his flashlight. One breath. Two. Held, for a few moments.

Silence.

He opened the door, climbed out shakily, covered the flashlight with his palm and turned it on, praying in the back of his mind.

 _Wake up..._


	53. ...blur...

The Esso was as black as everything else, and it was unlocked.

Turnbull locked the door behind him after standing still for long moments, listening carefully for any sound of shuffling, any hint that he might not be the only thing still moving. There was blood streaked to the floor and junk food laying all over the place, but after listening and hearing nothing, he started clearing the building carefully, firearm over flashlight, falling back on Depot and building searches and experience and duty.

It was an almost merciful reprieve from his own mind.

It looked as though a number of things were taken, and something bad had happened here, but at least within the store itself, there were no zombies. He made sure to secure all doors, those that weren't already locked.

There was water; bottles of it, some scattered on the floor and some still sitting in no-longer-functioning coolers. He was painfully thirsty, and now that he had time to realize it, probably more than a little dehydrated. That sort of surprised him, in a dull and distant way, that he could be something so mundane as _thirsty_ right now. And made him feel inexplicably guilty, as well.

He picked up the few bottles of water, took them back, set them on the counter.

And then he pulled out his wallet, took out a five and set it down next to them.

Somewhere south, his de facto best friend was laying on the roadside and between him and Turnbull, dying vehicles held dead people with .38 rounds in their skulls, and further back, and to the southeast, the town he loved was burning and overrun, and he was paying for some _water_ because he was _thirsty_ and for a split second, in that moment, he wanted nothing more than to crawl into his sister's arms and cry until he fell asleep without caring if he would ever wake up.

The bottles of water and the five-note blurred, and he closed his eyes.

It was a small, lost voice in his head, buried under duty and death.

 _Wake up?_

But there was no answer.

He didn't know what made him look up. Some sixth sense, some ancient sort of instinct that made him swing his flashlight around and _look_ , something that made the hair on the back of his neck stand up and a shiver crawl down his spine.

Just blackness. The front door, made of glass, and blackness.

Until the zombie hit it in a full-out run.


	54. ...cracked...

For the longest moment, all he could do was stare and pant, back to the counter, shaking.

The face looking back was still mostly recognizable as human. Male, early thirties, dark hair. And the unnatural eyes didn't look _through_ him, they looked _at_ him. Were it not for the mindless savagery, he would have thought he was looking at a living being.

The reflections off of the glass made a wild pattern, cracked but unbroken. It wouldn't hold for long. The steel bar dividing the panes would hold a little longer, but not much. Not enough.

Turnbull stared. Trembled. The zombie clawed against the glass.

More appeared behind it. Between him and his cruiser. He didn't bother counting. And he certainly didn't fire his sidearm, which had been unholstered and brought to bear before his conscious mind had time to catch up. That would put a hole in that door that might be enough for them to finish the job the initial impact started.

He stared, fighting down the urge to just scream back at them until he lost his voice, consciousness or life.

"Very well," he whispered, eyes narrowing.

And then he _moved_ , burning on adrenaline and sheer bloody-minded _anger_. He snapped up one of the bottles of water to tuck under an arm, and vanished deeper into the store, re-holstering his sidearm and covering the flashlight with his palm again to muffle the light.

There had to be something here. Something that would buy him time, buy him an escape, _something_ that would take out the zombies and allow him to get back to his cruiser. Something. Something.

Something.

What?

It was a petrol station. There were bound to be propane tanks outside, but he had no easy way to get to them. And no easy way to ignite them if he did.

He kept listening, even as he moved through the store, thinking a thousand miles an hour, faster than pain or even fear, pure determination to simply _survive_. He wasn't even sure if it was for his own life or just to deprive _them_ , and it didn't damn well _matter_.

The glass made a horrible noise; crackling, then shattering.

Batteries. He snatched them. Sound, he needed something that could _draw_ them, something that could buy him more time, something that would distract them and hold their attention even momentarily from him. Long enough to get outside and assess what he could do.

He searched through the shelves and listened. The groaning became audible, and he held the water and flashlight under his arm, snapped the batteries into a singing _moose_ , one of the many tourist-centric items adorning the shelves. Flicked it on.

 _O Canada._

He flipped off the flashlight, and listened past the singing moose on the top shelf. The door kept falling apart, and then there was the dragging footfalls, and he navigated in the dark with a hand on the wall, jaw knotted. Back door. Back door. It was down a hallway, around a corner. Back door, and they could have the damnable station and the damnable singing moose. Back door, and his hand slid up the frame, slowly... slowly turned the lock. Winced at the faint click.

He slid through it, back into the night and closed it. There was _light_.

Turnbull looked up.

The moon had come out from behind the clouds.


	55. ...ring...

There were three vehicles behind the Esso. Two sitting parked to his left. None to his right. A peek around the corners showed that what zombies roamed were all roaming for the front door, bumping into one another without any seeming rhyme or reason. Likely bottle-necking at that single point of entry. Behind him, against the back door, he could hear the first thuds as they followed his scent trail, presumably forgetting about the singing moose.

He thanked God that they didn't seem to have any mind left to turn around and scout around the building. Yet. If they could follow his headlights, though, he wouldn't put it past them.

One breath. Two. He didn't even have a formed plan when he loped unsteadily across the rear parking lot for those vehicles, clutching water in one hand and a flashlight in the other.

Pickup, Jeep, sedan. He got behind them, putting them between him and the Esso, and used what little light from the moon there was to peer inside. No keys in any of them, but the pickup had rope in the bed.

And a lighter in the cab.

He crouched behind the front of the pickup, wincing against pain he didn't even really feel, peering around it and fighting the world into sharper focus. Had to be there. It was a _service station_ , it had to be...

 _There._

He tore the water open, gulped down as much as he could despite the protest in his stomach and left the rest sitting there. Crept back along the truck, and got the rope out. Rolled under the truck with it, fished his pocketknife out, grabbed a chunk of broken pavement and got to work, flashlight forgotten.

The zombies had yet to take any notice. There was louder, harder pounding against that back door. He kept glancing that way.

Rust flaked into his face, forced him to blink; time stretched and stretched and he breathed fast, rapid through his teeth, winding tighter with every loud thud against that door, thirty or forty feet away; rust, blinking, _pleaseplease **please**_ and he dodged out of the way of the petrol that started to flood out of the tank.

Lighter in the cab. The door wasn't locked, and he ground his teeth at the creak when he opened it.

 _Breathe._

The wooden back door was starting to give.

No time.

 _Go._

He yanked the gasoline soaked rope out from under the truck, darted across the rear parking lot for the barely visible covers to the inground tanks, running as quick and quiet as he could, but he knew they were going to see him, it was only a matter of time; he had _seconds_ , not even minutes and _there_ , the covers; he dragged with his nails at the first increased groans as they saw him and tore his fingertips prying it off, then there was the inside cover, a simple catch-lever matter. Shuffling, groaning, getting louder by the millisecond and dear Lord, he wasn't _fast enough_ and then the first footfalls of _running_ broke through the mass of shuffling and groaning and he shoved the end of the rope down into the open fill line, started backwards, paying it out as fast as he could, staring at the mass making his way, the runners shoving through the crowd.

Five feet. Ten. The runners were closing. Fifteen.

 _Time._

He didn't even know if it would work when he flicked the lighter with the hand that hadn't held the rope. Once. Twice.

Caught.

Turnbull narrowed his eyes, lit the end of the rope, an instant line of searing orange light right back to the inground tank and the runners stopped so fast they nearly fell over at the sight of _fire_.

He didn't waste time to see if they would go around, he ran for his life; if that rope was in there deep enough, if enough fumes managed to escape that open valve, if there was enough fuel in that underground tank, if there was enough oxygen, and if it managed to--

 

 

 

 

 _...what...?_

 

He couldn't hear. Couldn't _see_.

 _Wakeupwakeup **wakeup**..._

Grass.

He gathered it into his fists, tearing at it, then shoved up, dizzy, fell over, got up again, crawled to his feet. The world was skewed and he kept reeling, but his vision cleared slowly. Couldn't hear past the ringing. There was an inferno as the tank was spewing fire to the sky, and the zombies had all backed up on the other side of it, the ones that weren't on fire, whatever primitive survival instinct left in their brains warning them from the flames; runners, the fastest, twitching on the ground, burning alive or undead or dead, and he staggered. The world rang and burned.

Cruiser. Other side of the building.

Half-blind, wholly deaf and stumbling every few steps, he did the only thing he could.

He moved.

The massive explosion when the second tank went up rocked his cruiser.

But Turnbull was in it.


	56. ...fallen...

Fire.

Somewhere amongst the fear and the walking dead and the running dead and the grief Ray Kowalski became aware of the _fire_.

The realization of what it was came in what felt like reverse slow motion; there was the soul-rattling sound, the light adding to the vague orange cast of everything else in the damn city that was on fire, and then... then there was dread. Dread, because there came a point of terminal saturation of terror, and it was somewhere back there where he'd given up on Stella.

Kowalski had never made room for thoughts about the government. About rescue, about life after zombies, about cures or solutions or what the world would look like when the dust settled. Everything had been escape, when everything wasn't Stella.

It never stole into his mind. There was never time.

He couldn't think he would've guessed, cynic though he often was, that _bombing_ was the go-to solution.

He'd seen it. It was too close to look away, and when it hit he shoved his foot on the gas pedal as though it were possible for the damn thing to go a micron further down.

God. If... if the zombies hadn't taken his beautiful perfect Stella, the firebombing would. 'Cause there was no way they were gonna bomb _Racine_ off the map and leave behind _Chicago_.

He wasn't out of grief. He had a fresh supply, more coming up all the time. It poured out with the panic, and the frantic drive back toward friends he didn't even think were still waiting for him. It was saturated with what amounted to a combination prayer and tirade.

"Fuck, fuck, fuck, I'm doneski, I'm dead, I'm fucking dead, please, please, please God, if you get me outta this I'll... I'll-- I fucking swear, I'll start a little church or something in the middle of bumfuck nowhere survivorville, I'll rescue abandoned turtles... I'll teach little kids how to keep off drugs and I'll be nice to Frannie's dog, I won't laugh at the Mountie's pumpkin pants and I won't make fun of Vecchio's hair anymore... Please... God..."

Tears streamed down his face with every word. The trip passed in a blur, a fact that was _dangerous_ considering the fire was running infected out to the surrounding areas and the shadows were milling. He bounced plenty off his roof. Some of them _darted_ at him to slam against the car doors, bouncing off. He didn't give a fuck anymore.

When he finally sighted the driveway, he thought his throat might close off from the sobbing.

The trip to the back of the house felt as though it passed in an hallucination.

\--oh, God, they were still _here_. They were here, thank _God_ , and he'd have to open that church and stop making fun of Vecchio and he'd-- he'd have to tell them he couldn't find her, he'd have to make it _real_ and the thought just wrenched his--

Wait.

They were here... and...

Vecchio looked up at him with that soul-aching look the man got. Big green eyes. Nothing but pain behind 'em.

Frannie was crying. That shouldn't mean anything, Frannie cried a _lot_.

Except Fraser was on the ground. On the ground, surrounded by the last of the crap they were packing up, looking a whole lot paler than he should.

"We've got a problem," Vecchio said, tone just as hollow as he looked.

Kowalski sank to the grass, shoving hands into his hair, his broken laugh just as good as a cry.


	57. ...unknown...

"--you don't know that! He was swimming in Lake Michigan, for Christ's sake, it could be anything!"

" _Look_ at him, Ray!"

"Hey, Francesca, I know that you're freaked out, but Vecchio's right, it could be anything. What d'you think we should do? Throw him overboard? Shoot him in the head?"

"...Ray... what if she is correct?"

"What if she's not?! Yeah, okay, so maybe you punched a zombie in the nose, but that don't mean you're gonna become one of them, that was over a day ago!"

"Right, right! I mean, you made yourself that sandwich, right, Fraser? Maybe the cold-cuts were bad. Maybe... maybe... _fuck_ , I don't know. But I am not going to sit there and put a slug in your head until you try to eat my brains."

"By then, it'll be too late! Stay out of this, Kowalski, whaddyou know anyway?"

"Just as much as you do, _Francesca_ , which is fuck-all nothing! Come on, babe--"

"Kowalski, that's my sister. Please?"

"--sorry, Vecchio. But seriously, Frannie, what do you think we should do?"

"...I don't know. Okay? I don't know. I'm just..."

...

"Yeah. Me too."

"Might I suggest... suggest..."

"Yeah, Fraser?"

"...precautions. I could..."

"Easy, buddy, just... stay there, don't move. You mean like locking you down or something?"

"I've got my cuffs."

"Yes. Yes, Ray."

"...okay. Okay, we'll do that."

  
Source photo of Lake Michigan by [EC Mike](http://www.flickr.com/photos/ec_mike/2821720440/in/photostream/).


	58. ...flight...

She was thirsty.

Stella sat looking down at the now-quiet streets. There were still a few milling around, but only a few. If she were on the streets, she could outrun them. Could jump into any one of the cars still parked along the curb. Could drive out of the city. Could find a bottle of _water_.

It had rained last night, and she had licked at the puddles collecting on the roof like a dog, but it didn't do more than really wet her mouth. She had no way to collect more, and her one attempted foray downstairs had revealed a building still full of moaning, heaving, _rotting_ people. She had nothing to fight with. She sat in the stairwell to the roof for awhile, thinking, but then they must have known that she was there because they started clawing at the door.

The river had flooded; two blocks over, it ran in the road like Venice, no one there to control the gates and flow anymore. Something pretty and too far away.

There was no way off this roof, unless she could fly.

She was thirsty. Exhausted. Constantly cold. Sleep came only when consciousness couldn't be maintained.

She had seen no one living in days. No planes in the sky. No distant sound of cars. Nothing. Silence. Below, sometimes, they shambled.

She thought about her family. Thought about Ray. Thought about her job, her life, the children she hadn't wanted, the man she was separated from because of it. She thought about dancing. She cried until she didn't have tears, and then she went downstairs determined, and then she realized just how far away that road really was.

In the end, her choice was death or unlife. Stella just didn't want to make it yet.

But she was so thirsty. Tired. She didn't even have it in her anymore to be afraid.

She looked down at the street. She looked off at the horizon, where smoke still curled from fires even after the rain. She looked at the river two blocks over that hadn't been there before. She looked up at the sky, devoid of planes, and watched a bird -- a _living thing_ \-- flying on wind currents, a graceful aeronautical dance in the red dawn light.

She looked at the street.

And then she took a breath. For her family, for her Ray, for her nonexistent children and her nonexistent career and her now nonexistent life.

She opened arms, closed her eyes and jumped.


	59. ...benny...

The clicks of the cuffs tightening felt like the signing of a death warrant.

Not because Fraser made any big deal about it. He just looked up at Ray with this _look_ and it made him feel like the worst guy in the fucking world, because it _wasn't_ the angry look of a perp, it wasn't the stony look of a common criminal.

It was the open look of a friend who trusted him, and God, it made Ray want to go back out and throw up.

They did a quick but thorough job cleaning up the forward cabin, using blankets they took from the house to cover Fraser over as the fever was climbing and he started shivering. Helped him wash off as he stood weakly in the tiny shower onboard, neither him nor Kowalski able to summon up any weird for doing so. And Fraser apologized again and again for being a burden, but at least he quit suggesting they leave him on shore.

Kowalski took the boat back out again, and now...

Frannie was still probably freaking out on deck. And Ray had just cuffed Fraser to one of the narrow bunks.

"It's all right, Ray," the Mountie said, earnestly. "It's a perfectly sensible precaution."

"Benton, right? Ben? Benny?" Ray asked, sliding a finger under one of the cuffs and making sure it wasn't too tight.

"Any of those is fine," Fraser answered, a smile crinkling at the corners of his tired eyes.

"Okay. Ben." Ray tried it out, then shook his head. "Nah. Benny."

"It is all right, though," Fraser said again, looking up at the cuffs, that smile turning wry. "Admittedly, it's rare when I find myself on this side of events, but..."

"Yeah." Ray looked at the open door of the cabin, then back at Fraser again, before reaching up and squeezing the hand that hadn't slammed into the face of a zombie, trying to keep his face even. And then he turned and settled down beside the bunk. "Me either, Benny." He took a breath. "It won't be for long."

Neither of them were sure they could even begin to believe it.


	60. ...ten-four...

"Bravo four-two-oh, control... ten-seventy..."

He didn't know if it was dark, light, night, day, cold, warm or for that matter, if he was even alive or dead or undead. He was vaguely aware that he was speaking -- whispering? -- but that was all. He wasn't entirely aware of the fact that he hadn't released the button on his mic, so any answer there might have been would have been unheard anyway, if there was anyone to even hear in this wasteland...

"Bravo four-two-oh, control. Ten-seventy..."

It also might have helped if he hadn't run out of petrol and the cruiser's battery hadn't died quite some time ago.

Turnbull wasn't in any kind of condition, physically or mentally, to note such technicalities.

"Bravo four-two-oh, control..."

It seemed almost silly to bother with his unit number. There wasn't anyone left who would even recognize it. It was a fair bet that their central dispatch was down anyway, which meant that if anyone _could_ hear him, they would have to be close enough to catch the transmission directly, as he hadn't heard FleetNet's repeater test signal anytime recently...

"...ten-seventy..."

Of course, all of this was rendered moot by the fact that his cruiser's radio hadn't been transmitting for hours. Turnbull wasn't aware of that, though.

"Bravo four-two-oh, control..."

The air changed.

"...ten-seventy..."

 _"Ten-four."_

Turnbull pried his eyes open. It didn't come in over non-existent static, it came from...

From...

The white-haired man who was standing next to the cruiser door he didn't hear open with a blood-stained cricket bat in his hand. At least, that was vaguely what it looked like. Turnbull couldn't be entirely sure.

"Have you been bitten, son?" the man asked, looking ready to haul him out of the cruiser either to help him or kill him, careful caution in his stance. He sounded far away, even standing right there.

"No, sir."

"You'll have to pardon me if I don't believe you without evidence," the man said, not unkindly. "The last group had sleepers in it."

"Of... of course, sir," Turnbull replied, politely. It seemed about the right time to adhere to good etiquette, either over the radio or in person.

His eyes slid closed without his permission again, and he didn't even really notice, just the afterimage of the man floating somewhere like a washed out photograph behind his eyelids.

"Right. Step out. Nasty head injury, you've got there. Where are you from?"

"Leaside," Turnbull replied, then thought carefully for a moment. "Terribly sorry, sir. Nipawin. Leaside was... was..." _Where I grew up. Where my family is._

"Sergeant Buck Frobisher. What's your name, son?"

Turnbull had temporarily forgotten that he had been ordered out, but the presence of a superior officer was enough to make him try to straighten up in the seat, at least. He forced his eyes back open as he did so and made the best attempt he could to unwrap himself from his steering wheel. "Constable Turnbull."

"Good, solid name." Frobisher seemed to be pleased with the answer, and offered a tired smile. "Can you stand?"

"Yes, sir," Turnbull said.

After a long moment, when he realized he was now laying on the ground and the world was spinning madly, he corrected, "No, sir."

It was the last thing he remembered.


	61. ...flurry...

Snow drifted down on him, a flake landing at the very tip of his nose to melt.

Somewhere, Fraser realized that he must be dreaming it. It seemed inconsequential. It was real enough, even indoors, and the snow had come during one of the alternating flashes of near-unbearable heat. Each flake was a tingle of relief, and he shifted, chafing against the cuffs.

The wind whispered, drifting swirls of cool across prickly, burning skin. Fraser shut his eyes, breathing in the frozen-clean air, his breath fogging on the exhale.

Quietly, he laughed. It was no shock when someone laughed with him.

In one crystal instant he was smiling up into the beautiful face of Victoria Metcalf.

"Hi," he whispered, breath fogging with the word.

Thin, tapered fingers caressed his cheeks, her skin cool to his fevered warmth. Dark curls fell around his face in a curtain. It took away the falling snow, shielded him from it, but he didn't mind. It fell into all of that hair, glistening. Sparkle. Halo.

"Hi," she answered, her voice as musical as it always had been.

"You're not afraid of me?"

"No," she said. Gently, one fingertip lingered at his bottom lip, and she slipped that finger between his lips, into his mouth. Adding another a moment later. "See?"

Fraser smiled around them, blinking away tears. Her fingers were cool and slid across his tongue as she took them back, wiping his cheeks with careful hands.

He shivered.

"I'm sorry."

"Ssh."

"I'm so sorry."

The snow fell in thick flakes. It covered everything, now, as far as he could see. It flecked Victoria's eyelashes, her hair, her shoulders.

Her kiss was cold when she leaned in to grant it, and then the dream flickered away again.


	62. ...shifts...

The first aid kits were the standard kind of stuff, with bandaids and antiseptic and all that crap. Luckily, there were gloves there, too, 'cause while Kowalski wasn't a germaphobe, _if_ Fraser was now infected -- 'cause he refused to believe it was automatically a zombie-thing, especially since Frase had been fine for a whole day before collapse -- he didn't want to risk getting it just by being nice to the guy.

Which was why he was sitting on the really narrow floor next to the really narrow bunk in the really small forward cabin of the really big yacht, mopping Fraser's forehead off with a wet rag and wearing latex gloves. Trading shifts with Vecchio.

It was a messed up thing to barely know someone, and care about 'em so much. Ray kinda got it, though. They were in a horrible, tense survival situation together, so you either gotta love or hate, but there's no easy way to be _indifferent_.

"How is he?" Vecchio asked, appearing yet again in the doorway and then immediately sitting down so he didn't block the light coming in. It stopped startling Kowalski by the sixth or seventh time in less than an hour.

"Fucked up," Kowalski answered, honestly. The first few times Vecchio had asked, Kowalski had been annoyed enough to go, 'What do I look like, Doogie-fucking-Howser?' or some variation on that, but then he realized that yeah, Vecchio's bluster really was only skin-deep, 'cause even though he'd snap back, there'd be that _look_ in his eyes, and Kowalski was just starting to get how much he hated that look and would do anything to erase it. Including be polite. "He kinda just... y'know, went away."

There wasn't any other way to describe it. Even after he dropped, Fraser had been _here_ , even if it was a weak and dazed here. But then the fever started climbing and he got further away, and then he stopped answering Ray's and Ray's questions, and then he started talking to someone else. For the moment, he was quiet, some kinda... beat, half-hopeful, almost _boyish_ look on his face that squeezed on Kowalski's already torn-up heart.

"Frannie's done freaking out," Vecchio said, quietly, his head dropped as he peered down at the floor between his feet. "Least, for now. Dunno if she's gonna stay that way."

"Yeah," Kowalski answered, trying yet again to bite down the tears that never wanted to stop after he'd turned around and left Illinois and Stella in his rearview mirror. Like any of them needed him falling apart like some weepy little brat right now. But they just kept threatening, and he kept trying to just... move the fuck forward and survive and at least Frase gave him something to do, even though everyone woulda rather had him healthy. "Guess I don't blame her, right? But..."

Vecchio picked his head up, looking at him, then Fraser, then his eyes slid closed and he dropped his head with a painful half-smile that finally did send the tears falling down Kowalski's face, though he refused to acknowledge 'em.

"Yeah," Vecchio said, softly.


	63. ...skin...

They'd stopped for the night and were lingering after dawn, the adults who wanted a say sitting in a circle. Elaine had her arm around one of the youngsters - his name was Willie, she'd discovered, and he could handle himself brilliantly for his age - and she was talking softly. One of the more formerly wealthy survivors had been suggesting making for an island on the lake for a while now, and the more they all talked, the better that sounded. Defensible, reasonably self-reliant, not very far. They'd have to commandeer some kind of water craft, and it was generally agreed that there were probably an insane amount abandoned at the lakeshore.

"I can hotwire a car," Willie offered, flicking a look between some of the scandalized adults before shrugging. "Hey, at least I'm honest! I dunno about a boat, but I'd try."

"Thank you, Willie," Elaine replied with a quiet chuckle, shaking her head.

"Hey, guys, we've got company." It was Tyler, a street vendor who'd been taking a turn watching outside of the storage building they'd picked to hole up in. He tapped his neck, a weird kind of slang-sign that had cropped up among the survivors in Elaine's group to indicate the company was living.

Sighing relief, she gave Tyler a look - _coulda said that first_ \- before picking up a shotgun and heading toward the entrance. Yeah. They'd learned by now that living could be just as dangerous as dead. A couple others joined her. Tyler. Reems, a veterinarian they'd run into not long ago wandering with his kid. Willie, though Elaine shooed him back.

A small group of people were approaching the building, a white _dog_ bounding ahead of them. They apparently got the need for precautions, as three raised weapons and a bouncing child practicing his punches didn't seem to deter them, though the dog slowed down warily.

"Who goes there?" Tyler called, and Elaine wanted to facepalm.

" _Really_ , Tyler?"

"What?" he whispered back.

She rolled her eyes.

"Detective Thomas Dewey, Chicago PD!" Came the call back, and the man actually flashed a _badge_. It put _Elaine_ at more ease, but surely this guy knew that ID could be as much a target as it was a white flag?

Either way, they didn't lower their weapons. Those people were pretty well-armed, and Chicago PD two days ago didn't guarantee he wasn't wanna-be warlord today.

"Coulda stolen that badge off a body." Apparently Tyler was also so stupid that he failed to notice the uniform on one of the other guys in the little gathering. He stepped out from behind the guy calling himself Dewey and put his eyebrows up. "...coulda stolen that too," Tyler amended.

Elaine rolled her eyes again. They watched the guy carefully as he pulled a wallet out and the group closed the distance. He tossed it at Tyler's feet. Something in her wanted to laugh that the guy kept it. Did it really matter now?

Apparently.

"Tyler, shut up," Elaine shushed, lowering her weapon a fraction. "Get that for me, would you, Willie?" Willie flashed it in her line of sight. The thing was proper ID, name and picture and all. She aimed back for the group. "Glad to see another living face, Detective. What can we do for you?"

"Could start by not killing us!"

"We'll get there." She smirked. Sense of humor at the end of a shotgun barrel. Hey, she kinda liked this guy. "Anybody hiding any bites? Show me your arms and legs! Skin, people!"

Dewey paused a moment and nodded to his group. Sullen, exhausted and clearly just wanting to _rest_ , the group did as they were told. Pulling up sleeves, pant legs, flashing what skin was accessible and decent to. Even the guy in panty hose. Which would've been weirder two days ago. The guy in the dorky glasses sounded like he was bitching quietly, but Elaine didn't care. No visible bites from here; she wasn't checking for asshole, just infection.

"Thank you!" She called out, all business, just like a civilian aid. "Any injured or sick?"

"Just tired. And Brandi's got some mean blisters from her heels, but that don't count."

"Says you," the man in a frock said. Elaine ignored it.

"Any of you got ambitions to start your own country?"

Dewey stared at her. Glanced back at his group. Back to her. "Uh. No. We've got guns. Able-bodied people. And, uh. A dog. Wolf. Dog. He, uh, kinda led us to you."

"--led you. To us."

"Hey, it sounds weird, but that dog is smart."

Well. Elaine wasn't checking for crazy, either. At least, not that kind. She lowered her gun, sighing. "...whatever." She turned an order on Tyler. "Keep a gun on 'em 'til they're clear. Have Trish look the women over for bites, get Rich to look over the guys, the usual."

Toward the back of Dewey's group, there was a cough.

The one Dewey called Brandi raised her hand.

"Just wanna be clear: I'm going with Trish, right?"

Willie was laughing.


	64. ...close...

Frannie looked out of the windshield of the boat, sitting at the helm, and wished she knew how to drive the thing. In her arms, the dog squirmed around a little and got comfortable again, panting, licking her neck, then settling.

Yesterday, she thought she'd reached the peak of loneliness, laying on that couch.

Today, she found out that she wasn't even _close_.

She didn't want Fraser to die, either. But after Ma, after... after all of those people, after seeing her brother bashing skulls in with a crowbar, after realizing that Ray Kowalski was leaving them, she was _terrified_ and she was sure that Fraser was going to become one of _them_ and then her brother would die, and Kowalski would die, and then she'd be just like that fifteen-year-old kid, dragging bloody hands over this glass she had finally got cleaned off.

And they couldn't _see_ that. Like just because they knew Fraser, it couldn't happen to them. Like a pair of handcuffs would stop somebody who couldn't feel pain or fear or anything but hunger.

She chewed on her lip as it trembled, eyes welling up again.

Ray hadn't seen Ma. He hadn't seen her laying there trembling on the couch while Frannie frantically dialed for 911, and he hadn't seen her covered in blood, dying, too much blood for every towel in the house it seemed, and he hadn't seen her shudder her last breath and he hadn't seen her _come back_ and oh, God, Fraser could do that to her _brother_.

And Ray didn't even seem to think about that, like maybe he could just believe Fraser into some kind of miraculous recovery from an infection that _no one_ lived through, like maybe making him drink water and cooling his brow would succeed where hospitals and doctors and smarter people than them failed. Frannie pictured him getting his arm bitten while he played nurse and had to stifle a sob.

Kowalski stalking back up made it easier. He was the only one who could drive. Frannie moved without having to be asked and didn't look at him, but she could feel his eyes searing into her as she did, daring her to speak up again. Tense and scared, just like she was, but with too much _testosterone_ to admit it.

They sat in silence for long, long minutes, then Kowalski said, "Maybe, uh... y'know, maybe we can find some kinda quiet place to stop and figure out more food for the dog or something."

Frannie bit her lip again, then nodded. "Yeah."

"Okay. 'Cause ramen ain't as good as puppy-chow."

"Thanks," Frannie said, reaching out a tentative hand to pat his shoulder, before heading as quickly as she could for the open air of the deck, where she could cry and pray alone.


	65. ...palm...

In the bright light of day, the world looked almost normal.

Maggie was used to solitude. Loved solitude, really; you don't grow up in the Territories without having some element inside of you that appreciates the relative lack of human presence. She'd never really known what loneliness was; in being alone, she had always been confident in her ability to remain whole.

Until now.

The world looked almost normal, but there was a hole in it that there shouldn't have been, pressed into her palm; a perfect circle, a ring of gold rubbed clean in her otherwise dirty hand. She had not let it go; when she couldn't carry it in hand, she slipped it into her pocket.

Now, she sat at the end of an abandoned runway in the middle of nowhere, under the bright light of the sun, so exhausted that the trees beyond the other end blurred everytime she so much as let her guard down for an instant. The cockpit of the plane was still warm, and she huddled in the pilot's seat, too on edge to close her eyes and too tired to keep them open.

Casey's ring pressed into her palm.

Casey's seat still smelled like him.

Maggie grit her teeth together, fighting with every bit of her tired soul to hold it back, to keep a grip, to fight past the swell of grief before it could latch around her throat. To hang onto her duty, hang onto her upbringing, hang onto _something_. Anything. Anything to fight off that bewildered, lost little voice in her head that was just learning now what loneliness was.

But the tears slid down her face, even as she slid down into sleep.


	66. ...she...

"Elaine Besbriss, Civilian Aid, 27th precinct."

"Oh yeah?" Dewey was positively tickled at the coincidence. "We got two of your sisters."

"More of us? Tell me it's not the tranny."

"Hey, now."

"What?"

"Look, I'm not an expert or anything, but I had to learn real quick that she's 'she' and not 'tranny'. Still trying to figure out if I'm supposed to pull out chairs for her, but I know that much."

They were in a semi-private corner, behind some stacks of boxes and equipment, Dewey's half of the bags of guns laid at his feet. Apparently this woman had risen to some kind of leader of this outfit. Dewey could respect that. Felt a little weird about it, but he could respect it.

He hoped she didn't mind when he pulled out chairs for her, too.

They were speaking in hushed voices as the rest of Dewey's group were looked over for bites and then checked by Reems. It was a pretty damn together outfit, Dewey thought, for being thrown together over the course of two days' rolling collection of random survivors.

It was enough to make a guy question the decision to try and take over.

"All right," Elaine said after a moment, shrugging. "Can't expect everybody in our group to go with that, but I don't have a problem."

"Thanks. She's a good guy, trusted her to watch my back a few times and she's never disappointed. Nice to meet you, anyway. The 2-7? Man, I heard a guy from there on the radio two days back, looking for other survivors."

Elaine pressed her lips together, reaching up to pull off her headband. Her hair fell about her shoulders. "Yeah? Did you catch a name?"

"Vecchio. Never forget that voice. Seemed to think he had a plan to get out."

"Ray." Huffing a laugh, Elaine shook her head. "Good luck to him. He probably swindled the zombies into thinking he was one of them and walked out of Chicago pretty as you please."

Dewey didn't get the joke, but he wasn't about to go pissing on a mini-wake. "Here's hoping." It was his way of saying 'I'm sorry'. A whole lot of those to go around by now, he didn't think it could begin to cover it, so he didn't say it. "Hey, listen, thanks for letting us in."

"Need all the breathing bodies we can get, Detective. Don't thank me."

"Nah, a lotta people are jumpy. With good reason. You could've shot us. I know we need you more than you need us. Look like you have quite a spread of people, and more people's gonna make it harder to move. So, thanks."

"Harder to move, more people to swing a weapon and watch the people who can't. It's a trade I'm willing to make. We've got twenty-two and a half. Twenty-nine and a half, counting your people." Elaine put up an eyebrow. "And a bunch of dogs followed you here, too. There's debate going around about whether we should keep them."

"They came with the wolf. We're just as baffled as you are."

"He's a wolf?"

"Looks like, yeah. Looked like a husky to me, but Steve's got a thing for 'em, apparently."

"Weird. He led you all the way here?"

"Yep. Just comes up on us out of the blue, bunch of dogs following him. Scared the shit out of me. Damn good zombie detector. Even better for finding food. He's pretty protective of the other dogs."

"Guess we're keeping them, then."

"...twenty-two and a half?" That had taken a minute to filter into Dewey's head, and he could only think it was some kind of grim joke.

Elaine smiled a bit sadly. "Trish is five months along."

"Oh."

"Yeah."

They were silent a moment, and Dewey nodded. A Hell of a thing.

She extended a hand, sweatband still wrapped across her palm, and Dewey shook it.

"Welcome to our apocalypse. Nice to meet you, Detective."

"Tom. And you, too."

Slipping the handkerchief back on her head, Elaine motioned Dewey to follow. "Come meet everyone."


	67. ...please...

Consciousness was often fleeting. Fraser wasn't certain which this was, now. He didn't feel exactly _inside_ himself, which should have been far more frightening than it was.

Still, he felt lucid for the moment, if cold. He was shivering. The snow hallucination had gone, as had Victoria, leaving behind a numb place in his chest that he sincerely hoped was emotional.

Ray - Vecchio - had come with another wet rag not long before, and had sat with Fraser for a while, relieving Kowalski.

"How is Francesca?" Fraser asked just above a whisper.

"Better. Calmed down." Ray was rearranging the rag on Fraser's forehead, gentle, like Fraser might shatter. Or as though one false move would transmit whatever he had.

Fraser chose to believe the former.

"I'm glad to hear it."

Ray didn't reply. Fraser didn't suppose conversation came easily at a time like this. He shut his eyes again as Ray sat back, once again attempting to calculate his odds of survival based on what he knew. The variables were many; in his moments of incoherent despondence Fraser was quite certain he was infected. When his logical mind took hold again he understood that all was not necessarily lost. There were an abundance of unknown quantities. Either way, he was clearly a very sick man and the weak link in an intensely dangerous survival situation.

It didn't bode well.

He timed his breathing to match Ray's. In and out. It was willpower alone that kept him from chattering, at times.

"Got anybody?"

"I'm sorry?" It sounded more of a nervous jolt than Fraser liked to admit.

"Back home," Ray clarified, softer, apologetic for the startle. "Sorry. Got anybody waiting for you up north? Family, I mean? I know you lost your dad..."

"Oh. No, Ray. Ah-- no family left, no."

"Huh."

Fraser thought perhaps the converse question would be hideously painful, considering, so he didn't ask. Neither did he want to mention the fear that perhaps there would be no one left up north at all.

"You know, I've only known you a couple of days." Ray laughed softly, looking off and rubbing the back of his neck. "Feels like years since the start of this week. Just a couple of days, and feel it in my gut, you and me woulda caught the guy that killed your dad. I mean... you're completely _nuts_. Weirdest guy I ever met, and I say that when we got _Stanley_ on this boat, but... God, if we all had to go through this, I wouldn't have traded you for anybody else on this fucked up ride."

Fraser blinked, still taking in slightly ragged breaths through his mouth. He twitched a pained little grin. Ray gave it back, those eyes of his still hollow, before whatever it was that allowed him to speak so candidly faded back into the man.

It was a few moments before it clicked that what Ray had said was _Please don't die_.


	68. ...air...

The air around La Loche had the distinctive tang of death, decay and mortality, and Buck didn't want to think about how it had become even passingly familiar to him. It wasn't like death in the wilderness or even death in a town, it was something else, something wrong and unnatural, and it made the hair on the back of his neck stand on end.

The air in the cruiser wasn't much better; the coppery smell of dried blood, the sharp scent of fear, sweat and the sense that time was ticking, but it beat what was _out there_.

Just about the only thing that kept Buck from taking the kid's .38 and putting a round in his head was the fact that Turnbull's skin had been cold and his breath fogged faintly in the air. And as far as Buck had experienced, usually those about to die and turn burned up in a fever. Mack had been ready to shoot too, standing on the other side of that cruiser, unnoticed and ready with his rifle. But after a few minutes where they both were prepared to do what they had to do, even if it really pissed Buck off that he'd have to while Turnbull was still breathing, he reached down for the pistol and brushed past a cold hand.

Couldn't have told otherwise. The man was covered in blood and pale as a ghost.

Then, Buck had to make some decisions. Could still be sick, but if Turnbull was left there, he'd be dead by nightfall whether he was infected or not, and after braving La Loche again and searching every damnable access road within radio range to find the man hours after his calls faded out, Buck was willing to take some chances he might not have otherwise. One officer for another.

"If you die after all of this, son, I'm going to wait until I drop dead, hopefully of natural causes, and kick your ass across the afterlife," Buck said, quietly. He didn't expect an answer and didn't get one; Turnbull hadn't stirred, not even when Buck pretty much lashed him into the passenger's seat with some rope out of the trunk.

Still, it felt pretty damn good to say it, if he did say so himself.

Kept him from thinking about his daughter and his granddaughter, the former of which had begged him not to go back out here looking for the voice on the other end of the scanner, and the latter of which wrapped her little arms around his neck and sobbed incoherently, not understanding what was happening except that her grampa was going away.

Mack was headed for the petrol stations in Buck's truck in the faint hopes of finding fuel and food to take back to the cottages. Buck was sitting in a battered, blood-stained, dented cruiser they had to fuel and jump-start with a half-dead puppy Mountie in the other seat.

And La Loche, which had been a nightmare yesterday, filled with panicked and dying and dead people... La Loche was eerily quiet. Buck had seen a few of the damned things, it wasn't totally empty, but there were a whole lot less people than he expected there to be.

He stared at the open, broken doors of St. Martin's and sincerely thought about not going in there. Hospitals and detachment buildings were the first places panicking people went when bad things happened, and there were bound to be undead roaming those corridors. Bound to be dangers around every dark corner where the light couldn't reach. And even if there weren't, the chances that looting made this pointless was there, too.

Still, the chance of getting medical supplies beyond his first aid kit went past Turnbull and all the way back to his family, hiding out in their old vacation cabin.

"You picked a fine time to die, Bob," Buck said, quietly, opening the driver's side door. The sound made his skin crawl.

He pulled the keys out of the ignition, locked the doors, made sure he had Turnbull's pistol and his own cricket bat and got out of the cruiser, limping to the dark hospital under the heavy, gray clouds in the eerie silence and surrounded by the smell of unnatural death.


	69. ...whisper...

The inside of the hospital was just as gray as the outside.

Buck never knew static could sound so damned unnerving.

He kept a careful ear out as he entered, and at first he thought the static was white noise or wind, but as he got into the main hallway, it more clearly became radio static and every hair on his body stood on end. It was coming from down the way, at the nurse's station, and every careful, edging step made him feel more and more uneasy.

Someone's battery powered radio, no doubt. Left on in the panicked rush as a whole community fell apart. There was blood streaking the walls, and when Buck edged towards the nurse's station to turn the damned thing off, checking each open door as he passed carefully, he saw bodies. Piled, wrapped in sheets. Laying unwrapped. It was a small hospital; he wondered how many died here, waiting for help that would never come.

Buck had known death well. Had spent his life tracking down criminals, in some of the most remote regions on Earth; he knew death from the perspective of the police officer, the hunter, the hunted, the rescuer, the man who gave a final prayer when help was too far away for someone who couldn't be saved. He was pragmatic about such things, and even he had to clench his teeth at the smaller forms wrapped in sheets, some of them too small to have even been able to walk.

Were it not for the kid in the cruiser and the people -- some of whom he loved more than life -- relying on him north of here, he would have turned around, walked out and vanished back into the most remote regions on Earth, and never looked back.

Something whispered, the barest hint near his ear, and he jerked a look back.

Nothing.

The radio sat on the top of the nurse's counter. The nurse sat in her chair, and her head wobbled on a broken neck, her teeth snapping at Buck, her body useless.

Buck looked up and down the hallway again, checking, then back at her.

She wore a cross around her neck; had once been beautiful, once been alive, and there were the tracks of tears left on her ashen face.

He carefully turned off the radio, then he set the pistol on the counter and held the bat in both hands. Hopefully... hopefully it would only take one blow. One bit of mercy in an otherwise merciless world; a final prayer for someone who couldn't be saved.

She was the only one still in there, and when he came back out with a large and heavy dufflebag stuffed with everything useful that he could get his hands on twenty minutes later, there were five roaming in the parking lot, trying to find his scent trail in the rotting snow and keep it.

The shots rang out, and every single one of those was easier than the gray, the static, the girl, the cross and the sheet-wrapped little bodies inside.


	70. ...tricks...

Fraser's delirium had returned to him, and with it, Victoria.

Snow draped his mindscape like a blanket when she appeared, more falling all the time. Endless dark sky was superimposed on the ceiling, gentle snowdrifts over four walls. Sometime back Ray Vecchio had fallen asleep, and the part of Fraser that understood reality knew that it must be fitful, light, troubled.

The air was the muffled peace of wind across snow, and his breath joined it in a fog.

"I thought I'd never see you again."

Victoria settled on him as gracefully as the snow upon the ground, near weightless on his chest. She merely smiled and pet back his sweat-damp hair.

"I'm sorry I can't hold you." Fraser shifted one wrist in his cuffs, gentle so as not to wake Ray. "I'm sorry for a lot of things."

"Ssh."

"Do you forgive me?" His eyes fell closed, a pained note making it through his whisper. He knew it was only a dream, only a vision, but he couldn't stop himself from asking.

"Ssh, Ben. Just rest. Relax."

"I'm so sorry..."

 _"You should be."_

His eyes flew open. For a fraction of a second the face he saw was twisted, bloodied and pale, grey-hazel eyes that looked back at him were glazed over.

Fraser flinched, gasping in a breath, even that incomplete before her visage had faded easily and quickly back to soft, smiling perfection. Her eyebrows drew together in concern and those cool fingers petted past his cheek.

"What's wrong, Ben?"

It wasn't real. None of this was, truly, a little voice somewhere reminded him. He panted off the sickening fear, coughing once or twice. "...mind playing tricks."

Distantly, Fraser understood that Ray was speaking. It sounded as through a strong wind, and he was unable to make out the words. Suddenly the cloth on his forehead was being turned to the cool side, and Ray, too, was flecked with snow. Still talking. Dark lines of worry in his expression.

"I-- I'm all right, Ray," he heard himself say. Distant. He saw Ray nod and say something. Fraser still couldn't hear it.

"He's worried," Victoria said.

"I know."

"I'm here," she replied, as though that should negate it.

"I know."

"Close your eyes." Her small hand passed down his forehead, over rag and sweat, fingertips grazing his eyelids to close them. She settled in on his chest, her hair falling all around him, and whispered the first sweet words of a poem that even now he couldn't remember.

Ray's voice faded on the wind, and Fraser's world retreated to the rhythmic sound of those words.


	71. ...roof...

The apartment building was starting to smell a little rank, but it was still livable. No power, no running water, but no zombies.

Angie and Bernie had seen to that.

It wasn't a big block, and that helped. Three stories, twenty-four units. Most everyone had been out when it happened and not everyone had made it back. Of those that did, there were four left alive aside them; the rest...

From the roof, she could see the fires still kicking up despite the rain that had fallen the day before, but none of them were close. If they got close, she and her group would have to ditch, but she had managed to keep them calm and keep them safe for the initial disaster, and in the day following it, which at least meant they wouldn't have to contend with panic and they could gather supplies from the other apartments before heading somewhere else.

She also hoped that rescue would come, or she would see some other sign of humanity, but there hadn't been any yet.

So, she bide her time. Bernie was a Godsend; they'd started dating a few months ago. He was kind, he was smart, and he wasn't another cop.

Angie Vecchio just wished she didn't have quite so much time to think about _Ray_. About his family, still _her_ family. Their house was six blocks from here. Maria's kids went to school only three blocks from here. Al's garage was a few blocks back the other way. They shared a neighborhood, shared a life, and now...

"Hope you're alive out there, baby," she said, softly, looking off in the direction of Octavia. Below, there were still some of the undead wandering around aimlessly, looking for all the world like confused drunks. Smelled only a little worse, too.

She stood, brushing her jeans off, and she was just about to head inside when she saw it.

It was a _plane_. A big plane, too; painted olive green with white markings that almost seemed to sparkle in the bright sunlight of the day.

Angie's eyes widened and she climbed up onto the roof access, waving her arms and smiling wider for every second that plane came closer. It was the _Army_ , and that meant that there were _survivors_. Suddenly, just like that, the world became a bigger, less lonely place.

She waved until the first explosions started up, seeming for a moment to be completely unrelated to the plane. Because it just couldn't be. The smile fell off of her face as she scrambled down, but she couldn't tear herself away from watching.

And then the horror sank in as the bombs fell in a line, tearing a hole right through the heart of Chicago.


	72. ...deal...

"Hey," Kowalski said, and Ray nearly jumped out of his skin, half-asleep. "Sorry, Vecchio," he added, a little contritely.

"Nah, it's okay. Shouldn't have been asleep anyway," Ray said, carefully letting go of Fraser's undamaged hand. "My turn up top?"

"Yeah," Kowalski said, bobbing his head up and down a few times. He didn't look much better than Ray felt, and even though they hadn't talked about it, Ray kinda got it. There came a point where the horror just... became everything, got to be so damn _perpetual_ that all you could do was keep functioning on the minute and damn the past and damn the future and damn the world.

Ray had forgotten what it felt like not to have a hole blown into his chest.

"Anything I should know?" Kowalski asked, slipping past him and pausing, and for a moment they stood chest-to-chest, unconsciously leaning against each other in the narrow space.

"Nu uh. I managed to get him to drink some water, and he's been talking to somebody that ain't me, but..." Ray took a breath and let it out, utterly unsurprised to find it shaky, shaking his head. "How's Frannie?"

"Scared. Told her we'd... find dog food or something," Kowalski muttered, like he was embarrassed that he was being _nice_.

Ray huffed out a little laugh, sad and amused and kinda grateful, too. "Yeah, hey, thanks Stanley."

"Fuck you, Vecchio."

"Aw, I love you, too."

Kowalski started laughing, a ragged sort of sound, and briefly dropped his forehead to the top of Ray's shoulder. Ray didn't need to look to know he was probably crying, too, and he chewed down his own tears.

"God, we're getting worse than Frannie," he said, trying to keep that tight note out of his voice. Failed bad, but he tried.

"Won't tell if you won't," Kowalski answered, muffled, and then drew away, taking up the spot Ray had just occupied.

Ray didn't look as he left the cabin. Some last-ditch attempt to salvage their pride. "Deal."


	73. ...weight...

Buck had a lot of strange things on his kitchen table in his lifetime, but he never thought a _naked_ , half-dead puppy Mountie would end up being one of 'em.

"Why don't you bring me a live one next time, Duncan Donut?" Marilyn had asked, after taking one long look between the two of them. At that point, all Buck wanted to do was get Turnbull off of his shoulders; he was in damn good shape for his age, but he still wasn't exactly a spring chicken anymore.

"Have to wait until Christmas, Mary Contrary," Buck had grumbled back, half-heartedly.

Marilyn Mackinac was a gutsy broad; former US Army nurse who got married at the end of the WWII to Bill Mackinac -- ingeniously known as Mack -- and moved to Canada where, presumably, she wouldn't have to see dead or dying young men from the combat theater anymore. Mostly, that had turned out true, all the way up until the world decided to come to an end.

She was a little older than Buck, though not much, and Buck wouldn't have traded her and Mack for fifty people half their ages to be with him and his family at the end of the world. Which had worked out really well, considering that they had all been vacationing together after Bob's funeral.

"How bad was it?" she asked, jolting him out of his thoughts some indeterminate time later, after he'd been playing nurse's aide (somewhat unwillingly, but Julie was busy trying to keep Patty upstairs playing old board games, Mack was keeping guard outside again, and Marilyn would likely eat anyone else alive) for however long. He kept thinking he was hearing things, but no matter how hard he listened, all he heard was the tired swirl of his own often grim thoughts.

"Quiet," Buck answered, more pensively than he preferred. "Damn town was almost empty."

"That's not the question I asked." Marilyn didn't look up from where she was giving the kid a hair-cut, clipping carefully around the ugly gash in his head so she could clean it. He was cleaned up otherwise, covered over in blankets, having been gone over with a fine-toothed comb. No bites, but it was an exercise in forensics -- from the bruising and the placement and pattern, Buck took a guess someone had hit him with a _car_ , sometime yesterday, probably fairly early in the day given the color.

"Buck. How _bad_ was it?"

Buck scowled, but then it faded. He understood what she was doing. He was a police officer, after all, and she was a former army nurse, and both of them had seen things that most of humanity never had, until now. "St. Martin's was bad. I had to kill a turned nurse who was paralyzed. There were bodies wrapped in sheets and a handful of them outside trying to track me. It was bad enough. Some of those bodies were too small to have been old enough to walk."

Marilyn nodded, still not looking up from where she was trimming.

Buck rubbed his eyes with his forearm, since he was wearing gloves, and sighed out. There was a certain catharsis to saying the words. Got it out into the open. He couldn't talk about these things to Julie, didn't trust the mental states of anyone else hanging around right now, so that left Marilyn and Mack.

Still wished she wouldn't have asked. "Have you figured out if he's going to live yet?"

"No," she answered, peering carefully at that cut through her glasses. "I don't know. If he's going to live, he's going to live. If not, there's not a damn thing I can do about it now. So, I'm going to pretend he'll live and you're going to come over here and hold his head so I can clean it."

Forgone conclusion that someone unresponsive for that long was probably in dire straits, but frankly, Buck had been expecting Turnbull to die on him pretty much from the moment Buck found him, and it had yet to happen. Two hours of kitchen-table triage, two liters of saline and lots of vital-sign checking later, and he hadn't woken up, but he hadn't dropped dead, either.

Of course, it still startled Buck and had him reaching for his cricket bat when the kid jerked his head away from Marilyn and into Buck's forearm with an incoherent sound of pain as she started trying to wash out that wound. It was only a glare from Marilyn that stopped him.

"Hell, Duncan Donut, why don't you hit him again and maybe that'll fix it." But there was some relief in her eyes anyway; if Turnbull was there enough to feel and try to avoid pain, then he was in better shape now than he'd been in earlier.

"After all the trouble he's put me through, Mary Contrary, don't tempt me!" Buck blustered back.

But he didn't mean a word of it, and something in him was released.

Maybe this one would make it.


	74. ...passage...

The world still smelled wrong.

This was the sort of wrong that was likely no longer salvageable. This was not a knowledge Diefenbaker had in the first-hand, but it was hard-coded, the facts of extinction. This was a permanent wrong. This smell would not truly leave this world in Diefenbaker's lifetime.

There were moments when he would still weep for it if he were capable. Dief would do whatever he could to ease the passage of humanity into extinction, if that was what it was to be. Primary objective was to find his human, but along the way, he would do what good he could manage. The Gray Man's group, he had seen safely to the smell of other living. The alpha female of this pack of humans smelled right. Gray Man seemed to be interested in investigating dominance; Diefenbaker knew he would not succeed. It was grimly amusing, watching these humans determine pack order. So very natural, even as their species died around them.

They would make a fine pack, he thought.

His own pack kept close, mostly. Some of the more human-reliant dogs, the smaller ones, had latched on to other humans in the dwelling. Diefenbaker knew those would not come with him. Very few of his packmates truly would. He could not ask them to travel this distance. His journey was not theirs, though he would keep them safe so far as he could.

A soft, proud head settled on his haunch and Dief gave her muzzle a lick.

This one, he hoped, would make the distance, though he would never ask her. He felt a kinship of something more wild with her that many of the other canines could not seem to understand, but Diefenbaker could not ignore that she had lived with a human pack, and would not deny it to her if she wished to stay with these people. She still wore the human marker about her neck; M-A-G-G-I-E, it read. Her true name was undoubtedly far more beautiful, but Diefenbaker had no ability to hear her when she yipped it. To him, she would have to be Maggie.

The initial vying for dominance had been short; her stare had averted swiftly, and she had followed him, among the first to join his pack off the street instead of coming from the quarantine kennel. He had done his best to comfort her since they found each other. She, in turn, had comforted him. They worked intuitively with one another on the move. She was a skilled hunter. The rest of the pack looked to her, and she looked faithfully to him.

Maggie returned the lick and nudged at his muzzle. He shifted and resettled himself to make her more comfortable.

Her weight was rapidly becoming familiar.

Sighing heavily, Diefenbaker closed his eyes to the rhythmic lick at his ear.


	75. ...small...

The fires still showed on the horizon, distant though they were now. Gave an eerie cast to the evening sky, from smoke drifting black and thick across the horizon to the southwest.

Ray did his best to make some ramen on the small kitchenette stove, while Frannie sat at the bench-style seat. He'd never cooked on a boat before. Hell, he wasn't much of a cook anyway. But it kept him moving, kept him thinking, and he thought some hot food, even if it was cheap, might help chase away the chill when the boat wasn't running. While it was running, they had a marine radio and lights and all that, and for a little while after, but then they had to turn it all off again so they wouldn't run down the batteries. No one answered their calls anyway.

Ray figured that meant they had just enough light for him to make food below, and then they'd be back to camping lanterns or candles or something until it was his turn to take care of Fraser.

Frannie wasn't talking to him.

She wasn't glaring at him, either.

Both of those facts made Ray feel small and scared, and he hated that fucking feeling.

"Chicken or beef?" he asked, just to break the silence.

"Beef," she answered, quietly.

"Okay."

"Give Fraser chicken," she said, as he dumped the noodles into one of the plastic dishes he'd washed out thoroughly with the water that was apparently running on this big, fancy boat. Wished he woulda known that yesterday, but he was glad they figured it out today. At least until they ran out, it saved what was in bottles.

"Like chicken soup?" he asked, trying to get a smile as he set the bowl down, eyebrows up.

Frannie picked up the fork, stirring the noodles around. She gave him a little half-smile back that didn't even come close to her eyes. "Yeah, like chicken soup." She huffed a miserable noise through her nose, small. "Cures anything."

Ray stuffed down the flinch he felt and turned back to the stove.

Ten minutes later when they turned off all of the lights and that again, he was carrying down two bowls of ramen, one beef and one chicken for Kowalski and Fraser.


	76. ...southeast...

"Every swinging dick!"

Even spiking terror for being under attack, Elaine found a moment to facepalm at Tyler. She wanted to formulate some kind of snarky response about not having time to grow one, but it didn't matter, and the panic in the man's voice was enough to cut off the urge.

She shook her head before hefting a shotgun, finding Dewey flanking her with all the speed and skill of someone suitably traumatized by the past few days.

There was no keeping the noise down, now. The youngsters and several adults less suited to fighting were collecting at the center of the building and those willing to take a more proactive role were gathering weapons. Light from outside illuminated Tyler's eyes through the small gap in the door.

A hacked-off zombie arm lay oozing on the floor under a hole broken wide in what had been a small gap in the wall; Tyler's call out had broken the collective stunned freeze at that. The wall surrounding was stained with a scratched, bloody handprint. It was Blue that held the dripping machete, an expression of blank trauma on his face.

They were compromised. Tyler wouldn't have called out like that if the infected weren't already on them.

"A runner," Tyler whispered, his voice having died following that summons. Terrified. Eyes flicking between the infected a few feet away and what was obviously across the land beyond. "More coming. Lots more."

They all shared a brief glance. Any last hope that it was a stray died on that.

Elaine nodded once before marching up to the hole - there were already probing, sickly green-gray fingers of the spared limb venturing to test the edges of the hole - and slid the barrel of her shotgun through it to fire at whatever was on the other side.

The group centered in the room collectively flinched. A few people screamed. The dogs roaming the place milled, some of them yipping or howling and that was exactly what worried her about the damn things, because if they weren't already a dinner bell like this, the dogs were making them one.

The white wolf yipped just once, and Elaine could see out of the corner of her eye that his hackles were up. Instantly, the dogs quietened.

That was a Hell of a talent.

"Windows," she hissed at the others who seemed content to stare at Tyler as though it were his fault they were beset by infected. It was an order, no mistake, and only Dewey failed to follow. Elaine didn't have time to argue with him when he took Tyler's place at the lookout gap in the door, sliding the barrel of his own gun through it, holding it open. She was busy breaking the hole of her own wider; it was there, she might as well defend it or some other damn zombie would stick an arm through it.

It was then she got a chance to see what was coming.

It was... a swarm. Shuffling, most of 'em, with a few lopers coming on ahead and everything in Elaine wanted to curl up somewhere and weep but she was getting used to that feeling, now. She didn't know where they'd come from. Some of 'em looked like their clothes and flesh were half burnt-off, so maybe a fire had driven them out.

The wolf loped for the door between her and Dewey, growling very quietly.

"You good with that gun?" Dewey whispered, sounding way too much like he was asking about the weather for a man staring down the undead.

"Think I would've gotten this far if I wasn't?" They were coming. They were coming. Elaine's nostrils flared.

"You should've been a cop."

"I would've been. If."

It was Stewart that piped up, cutting off whatever Dewey was gonna say. "Clear north side."

"Clear west."

"Infected east."

Elaine breathed. She and Dewey had south.

There were... so many.

The second fire of her weapon for tonight took off the top of a runner's skull.


	77. ...overrun...

The ravening noises the bastards made were a chorus in the multitude. Almost musical. A bent and off-key harmony to the uneven beat of gunfire and frightened screaming. It heaved in volume with every wave out of the trees, and every wave that went down was followed by another moments later. It felt like an entire city's worth of dead was bearing down on them. Where the Hell had they all come from?

Elaine's sweat-rag was failing her again, but she kept firing. All the faces started to run together. Man, woman, child. A young woman wearing half a purple t-shirt fell under Elaine's shot and the spread struck a zombie with one arm and a gleeful rictus, knocking him back just to stagger forward again.

That one's head exploded in a rain of skull fragments and blood under a shot from Dewey. He was a good shot; Elaine actually found space to be pleased she got to see him at work, somewhere between blinding terror and a keen awareness of the zombie-to-gunman ratio. The numb place where lived the grim determination to keep firing until they'd all stopped moving.

She wanted to bark at Willie to keep back, to hide with the others but she found she couldn't when she realized he was bringing her more ammunition. The wolf was proving useful, though. He was circling the non-combatants, and it wasn't long before he was dragging Willie by the hem of his hoodie back to the center of the room.

A runner made it through the ranks and slammed hard against Tyler's window, taking out some of the boarding left on it. The man shrieked, flying back and blowing the zombie's head to smithereens. Blood misted. Elaine could hear Ashley sobbing.

Elaine fired, taking off another head, and then again, hitting something's shoulder.

"Cover that window!" Dewey shouted, warning, urgent alarm because Tyler seemed to be frozen and panting, staring at the body draped over his windowsill.

"Willie, no--" Too late, Willie had yanked the gun out of Tyler's hands and shoved him aside, kicking the mangled body of the zombie back out the window and taking aim. No time. No fucking time.

"Getting low on ammo." Dewey was efficient, unflinching with the pull of his trigger, and Elaine found they worked very well in intuitive tandem.

"I know."

"More coming."

"I can see that!"

 _"Elaine."_

Another runner barreled directly toward Elaine's gap in the wall. Its face was twisted and peeled back over one side, revealing jaw and teeth. Its tongue lolled out of that side were some teeth were gone. There was something about the thing that made her feel like it really was meeting her eye. Her shot took its knees out, and her stomach turned as she watched it take handfuls of grass to propel itself along at a crawl.

Breathe. Blink. Breathe.

"We're gonna be overrun," Dewey reminded her, panic finally edging his otherwise level voice.

Breathe. This was the best building they'd held through this. It hurt like Hell to give it up. Surely if they just held on... they were coming slow enough to fend off, surely it would stop...

Where there was one there were always more.

"All right." She fired a last blast before turning to address everyone. "Stay on the windows. Except you, Willie, and Reems, you'd better be moving too. The rest of you: pick up a weapon, take the vital stuff and get to the vehicles. Get out before the back is blocked. If anyone is bitten, _leave them behind_ and don't wait for us, just get out."

 _"...Elaine..."_ Dewey was firing more rapidly now, one of few not stopped to stare in horror at her for the realization that they weren't going to hold this building.

She ignored it for an instant. "What are you people staring at? Move!"

"Elaine!"

"What?" She snapped a look back to her break in the wall and physically recoiled.

The buzz of noise swelled like cicada song. A legion of infected, more than enough to level this building and then some, poured from the trees behind the dwindled ranks of the last wave.

"...go..." It was a whisper. She snatched her voice and forced it out at a yell. "Get out, everybody, to Hell with the windows, get the fuck out, go!"


	78. ...screaming...

_Movingmovingmovingrunningmoving..._

Glass was hard and wooden in parts and the space inside smelled of sustenance. Sweat, adrenaline. Screams that called to It.

 _Breakbreakbreakbreak... moving... Breakbreak--_

Glass was no longer hard and wooden in parts. Glass was now space. Space that led to Food.

 _Speedspeedspeed... firstfirstmovingmoving..._

Glass was sticking in It. It did not understand pain.

Others clamored through Its space, but It was first. Food screamed. Heartbeat, blood through loping veins, pounding in chests full of air that screamed. Food had dwindled. Food was rare. Food was screaming.

 _Catchbitebitebitebite... eatchewtearingbleedingeating..._

Food was the warmth of life It had almost forgotten. Almost.

Food was... running, taking away Its meal, It had only gotten a taste of one limb. Then, Food was falling. Crawling. Movingmoving. Getting away.

Its lunge for Food was halted abruptly by the scatter of impact at Its arm. Air touching the dead blood that filled Its body. Dry eyes swiveled to stare at Its bleeding stump. Confused. _Whywhywhy? Arm? Arm?_ It raised the stump, flexing fingers It no longer had. Blinking, It swung around. Food had gotten away. Bigger Food behind It held an arm-stick. It knew arm-sticks; they ended Others' search for Food. This arm-stick had taken away Its arm.

It waved Its stump again. _Whywhy? Arm? Hungry..._ It came out as a ragged wail, and Bigger Food recoiled, raising the arm-stick, the heat of that blood pumping faster in a rhythm It could see. Warmth blurred the air to Its keen eyes. Called to It.

Long-numb fingers of the remaining arm reached for Bigger Food. Bigger Food stared at the arm-stick, pumping it, nothing coming forth, and It overtook Bigger Food, sinking teeth into the sweetness and heat of Bigger Food's neck, tearing away.

 _Chewchewtearwetwarmbeatingbeatingpumpingscreamingbreathingwarm... life..._

The Others were a hum of being in the background of Its awareness. So many Others. So little Food.

 _Screamingscreamingeatingnomorescreaming... sigh... breathe... bleed... airairbreathing..._

Warmth was the hum in the center of It. When It fed, It could almost remember. Living. Running. Time. Pain.

It fed. For a moment, Its arm hurt.

 _Hurt._

Bigger Food went still. Bigger Food's heart still beat.

Others came to partake of the warmth as the screaming around Them dwindled.


	79. ...thread...

The threads of awareness were slow in coming, and that wasn't helped by the pounding headache. For the barest moment, he thought the nightmare had finally ended: he was warm, laying on something soft, but nothing smelled right.

Reality returned with a sharp edge of panic and Turnbull sat up so fast that he made himself horribly dizzy all over again.

He swayed for a long moment, holding his bandaged head in his shaking hands -- _...wait, what...?_ \-- and waited for it to subside before chancing another look around, his swimming vision settling into stability. He was clean, in a bed, wearing someone else's RCMP-issue sweats, and it seemed as though he'd been cared for...

Something was burning.

The white-haired man walked past the open door, humming something, wearing a pair of green smoking oven mitts. Then he walked backwards and paused in the door. "Good, you're awake! Had us a bit worried for awhile there. How's the noggin?"

Turnbull stared stupidly for a few moments before he found his voice; when he did, it was a rough and cracked, "Sore... sir." Right. Frobisher. Sergeant Frobisher. Presumably retired, but still. "I... where...?"

"Family's vacation cabin. You're damn lucky I heard you on my scanner," Frobisher replied, pulling off one of his oven mitts to wave at Turnbull. It smoldered a moment longer, then caught on fire, and he grumbled something, dropping it and stomping it out. "These things are supposed to be able to handle the heat..."

Turnbull felt another spike of anxiety that made the headache intensify. There was no way what happened was a hallucination. His skull and the many other bruises he could feel were living proof. How Frobisher could act so... so _casual_ when...

Something must have shown on his face, because Frobisher's cavalier demeanor dropped when he looked back up. "Listen, son: There's nothing we can do, except pick up what survivors we find and do our best to protect them. So, you go ahead and get up -- carefully -- and head over to the kitchen for some tea. The moose loin will be done in... well, it is done. Very well done."

The idea of taking _tea_ and having a _meal_... Turnbull barely heard his own little manic bark of a laugh. Or maybe it was a sob. Maybe it was both. He wasn't sure.

There was very little he could do in this condition, any which way; the only thread in all of this disorientation was the steady command in Frobisher's tone, calm and sure. Feeling numb and cold again, he did as he was told; carefully climbed out of the bed, reaching out to lean on the wall until his sense of balance returned. His knees still felt too weak to hold him up, though they did this time.

"I'll get you something for your head," Frobisher said, and then continued on to wherever he had been going.


	80. ...reliability...

"Hell's bells..." Bob Fraser said it mostly to himself, but even so, his clearly sick son jerked a look on him.

"Hello, Dad," Benton whispered, that far away grin of his wavering. He coughed and looked up at a space beside him, nodding to it.

Benton was sickly pale, covered in a sweat-sheen, his hair mussed, and he was _trussed to the bunk_ by a set of handcuffs.

"Not Dad. Ray." The blond Yank had taken up some kind of slouching sentry. "You're having a delusion-thing."

"Oh, shut up, Yank. I knew a man called Ray. Tried to impress a girl by bouncing a hockey puck off a tree trunk and damn near took out her eye on the ricochet. You don't look any smarter. Just what have you done to my son?"

The blond - Kowalski, Bob thought he'd heard - didn't answer for obvious reasons, but Benton laughed, a kind of sing-song, ragged sound that by no means helped the pool of dread.

"What's he done to you, Benton?" He turned to Kowalski. "I swear I'll find a way to make myself corporeal, I'm as good a shot as I ever was in life..."

"But a great deal more reliable."

Bob blinked, having watched his son appear to come lucid in a split second from his daze. "I beg your pardon?"

"Yeah, sure, reliable," the blond offered, pretending to understand.

"You know, Dad..." Whatever the thought was, it was apparently lost, and Benton relaxed again, sighing out. He looked again to the space beside of him, twitching another grin. "She isn't afraid of me."

"She? What the Hell is going on?"

"Sure she isn't, Frase. Frannie's just upset. None of us really think... think you got... y'know. She's just worried. 'Cause you're sick and sick sucks. I'm sure she'll come and see you soon." Kowalski was speaking to Benton as one might a half-sleeping child, and that made Bob want to thank the man and swat him all at once.

The ramifications of what the man just said slammed Bob in the face like Buck Frobisher naked on a swingset.

"Great _Scott_ , Benton, have you been bitten?"

"My father, master of the obvious!"

"What? How long ago?"

"Oh. Approximately a day and a half." Benton laughed, shifting in place, jerking one hand against the cuffs. Bob gave it a quick once-over from where he stood; sure enough, there was a wound to his fingers. Could be a bite, though there was no clear dental impression. It was red, angry, blackening at the edges. It fit. Benton rolled his head to look at the blond. "How many dead people are standing in this room, Ray?"

Kowalski's expression honored every bit of soul-shuddering _fright_ such an eerie statement should inspire. Bob was just as agape.

"...no... How many-- dead people?" Kowalski leaned forward, dragging a hand through his own hair, before looking back up. "You're a freak."

Bob got the feeling that was meant to be some kind of twisted compliment even for the aching tone, but he didn't have time to worry about that. His mind was working a mile a minute, and he supposed it was likely the _denial_ or _bargaining_ stage of grief, but he wasn't going to give up that easily. Neither, if he had anything to say about it, would Benton. He strode to his son's bedside and knelt to the floor. "Son..."

"...Dad?"

"If it's been that long and you haven't turned..."

"What are you _blithering_ about?"

"I didn't come all the way from the great beyond to see you turn into one of them!"

Benton's laugh was painful. "Oh, well, I was giving it strong consideration until you said that, thanks, Dad!"

Bob stood up with what was most certainly not a _'hmph!'_ , glancing between his son and the frankly stricken-looking Yank.

"Stay alive, son. I'll do what I can."

"And just what would--"


	81. ...buck...

"I need a favor, Buck."

Buck looked over at his partner from where he was taking a leak in the outhouse, one eyebrow slowly going up. Later, he would figure it was the intimate familiarity of that voice and his own exhaustion that meant he didn't leap out of his skin and soil himself, but for that split second, it seemed perfectly _normal_ that his dead partner was standing next to him, clear as day. "If you haven't noticed, Bob, now might not... Holy Mother of God!"

Bob held his hands out, averting his gaze. "Heavens, Buck, point that thing at someone else. Has anyone ever told you that you're a hard man to get through to? Anyway, as I was saying, I need a favor. My son is currently floating on Lake Michigan, after being beset by a horde of the undead in Chicago, never mind that he's taken up with two Yanks and a girl--"

"You're _dead_ , Bob." Buck hastily buttoned up his trousers. "What are you doing here?"

Bob looked affronted. "At least I'm not undead. And I was trying to tell you, before you interrupted me. Now, Benton is floating on Lake Michigan -- he was trying to track down my murderer in Chicago, but that's neither here nor there -- and I don't believe he'll make it alive to the Canadian border without some..." Bob narrowed his eyes. "How come you're here and not tracking down my killer?"

"I was taking some time with my family after your funeral!" Buck could not believe he was having this conversation. Though, after La Loche, he had gotten very good at telling the alive from the undead from the genuinely dead. Admittedly, this was the first time one of the properly dead had decided to speak to him. He rubbed over his eyes, but when he opened them again, sure enough, Bob was still there. Damned peculiar.

"Ah well. I should have known that you would want to run off for some hunting and fishing. You never met a funeral you didn't like, did you? The younger officers still snicker about the disaster at Keeley Johnson's wake. A Hell of a send-off. I guess the way to get away with something is making it so bizarre that your fellow officers are too damn confused to write the report. Never mind that, now. As I was saying, Benton is on Lake Michigan. I don't trust those two Yanks or the girl to keep him alive, and I've already called in a couple of favors to show up ahead of schedule, which means I suppose I have to rely on you."

Buck was lucky. Julie had been willing to come with him for a week's vacation and bring Patty, taking advantage of the property that had been in their family since Buck's parents got their hands on it. But when they had gone into La Loche to pick up supplies, they had found...

Well. It was obvious what they had found. Old news. He still cursed whenever he thought about how many more could have been saved, if not for the fact that some had been hiding infected wounds and turned on the others. Still thought about how many more might be out there, and how little he could likely do for them. But at least he had this group, ragged as it was.

Just north of Descharme Lake was where they were now, and Lake Michigan was very, very far away.

"I'd love to know how you think I'm going to get to the States," Buck said, puffing up his chest. "That's two days or more from here, and that's assuming I don't end up dead or undead. How am I supposed to even contact him?"

Bob gave him an arch look, though there was something nervous shining in his eyes underneath of his haughty bluster. Something had him on edge. Well. Perhaps the fact that he was dead. Still, he said, "Leave that to me."

Buck shook his head and picked up his oven mitts and lantern to turn for the door. Bob muttered something about having apparently signed up for being the Recently Deceased Pony Express. But when Buck looked back to complain...

Bob was gone.

"Madness," Buck said, shaking his head, heading back for the cabin to go check on his moose loin and the lone survivor of Nipawin.

But as mad as it was, he was already thinking about the possibilities.


	82. ...snowstorm...

The snowscape descended, and Fraser arched his back, putting all of himself into the fog of his breath into the sky.

Victoria was here. She did not rest on his chest, or stand beside him, or float above him. She was the snow. She was the air, the fog, the cold. She wrapped around him and filled his lungs, and he laughed for the relief of it, slumping back to the bed.

The wind whispered.

"Ben..."

With cracked lips, Benton whispered back.

"Victoria."

His skin tingled. Tingled and crawled and then sparked as though someone had touched him in the cold dry air and shared a static shock. The wind howled and the snow fell so thick that he could see no further than his hand might show in front of his face, if only he could get out of these cuffs. If Ray was there, he couldn't see. Couldn't hear.

She whispered. Poetry. He tried to whisper along, tried to keep remembering, tried to hold onto the sounds but he found he couldn't. Victoria filled his lungs on the next breath and spoke it for him, her voice in layers through his own, strange to his ears.

The storm raged.

Raged and raged...

An eye in the storm took form above him, a clear channel in the static blindness of snow to a circular haven of clear blue sky. The column of the eye wall rose to what felt like infinity, encasing them, and as it formed so in the center did a swirl of the snow. Taking form on his chest, the eddy of white turned black and draped across him with loving weight.

Laid out across his body, Victoria smiled at him. Static electricity prickled at him where she touched him, scattering goosebumps, standing his hair on end.

"Am I dying?"

"I don't know."

"What-- what's happening?"

"I'm here."

His wrists ached. His muscles ached. His eyes ached. He felt like his bones were trying to rip their way out of his body and leave him behind.

The storm reflected in Victoria's eyes, hazel and white light. He felt her small hand settle on the join of his wrists to those cuffs, cold skin to burning hot, a contradiction to how hard he was shivering.

"Do you want out of these?"

"--what?"

"I could take you away from here," she breathed, searching his face. "I can take off these cuffs."

"How?" He blinked rapidly, chest heaving, suddenly finding the cold air in his lungs felt like breathing in bleach fumes instead of relief. "--they-- trust me, I can't just--"

"They don't matter, Ben." His lungs constricted for an instant, and he was coughing, desperate for air. Victoria's stare remained steady even as she tightened fingers around one cuff, shaking it. "They're letting you die. You saved their lives and they locked you to a bed like an _animal_... say the word, Ben. Come with me."

"I-- They-- No. How is this even--?"

" _Ben_. Come with me."

"That went as well as could be expected, I suppose." Bob Fraser took abrupt form beside the bed, fixing his mangled stetson to his head.

Victoria snapped a look up at the man, eyes flashing in some emotion that Benton was too fragmented to identify. She snarled, blinking out of existence, storm and all.

"Don't you want to know what I've done?" His father tilted a worried look at him. "Still have an uneasy relationship with lucid, I see. Hm. Well. I'm a patient man, I can wait. It should pass."

Benton was burning up again. He turned on his side, twisting the cuffs painfully around his wrists, and let out a ragged sob.


	83. ...twelve...

There were two types amongst the survivors: Tough northern stock and soft city-slickers. The first grouping made up six, including Mack and Marilyn, the latter made up the other two. If it had been the other way around, Buck might have lost his mind, but that wasn't how it turned out. So, only days after the world ended, they had a pretty good system set up: Those who could go out and guard the cabins (keep an eye out for signs of survivors and pick off any of the undead bastards who made it up here) did and those who couldn't... well. It wasn't their fault. No one expected the apocalypse, after all, else they might have brushed up on their survival skills.

Buck set those two up hauling water from the well, helping Julie watch Patty, doing laundry. Domestic business. It kept their minds from their troubles. Amused him, too, in a grim sort of fashion; two businessmen washing clothes, after they had been in La Loche from the big city so they could try to convince the natives how badly they needed new oversight and grand ideas.

There had been quite a few more of them, when they started away from La Loche. That was one of the biggest troubles of it all. If not for those concealing bites, Buck might have upwards of twenty survivors right now. It still pissed him off.

Number twelve was his very lucky rescue, and the closest thing Buck could really consider to a triumph since the massacre. Didn't know if Turnbull was going to end up useful or not, but at least he was alive.

Now, Buck also wondered about the possibilities of thirteen, fourteen, fifteen and sixteen. And maybe wondered how the Hell he came to be considered some unwitting patron saint for the next few generations of Mounties.

"Have you ever been to Chicago?" he asked, slicing up the moose loin into strips. The cabin was warm from cooking and the fireplaces, and Buck was sure that the relative normalcy was good for everyone. Seemed that way, anyway. Oil lamps and candles, fire, moonlight; he rarely used the power here in the normal course of things, and so it wasn't particularly off-putting to conserve it now.

"No, sir," Turnbull answered, quietly.

Poor kid was in shock; thousand-yard stare and all. Buck couldn't blame him. He didn't fail to notice the missing rounds in Turnbull's sidearm, or the missing rounds in the boxes of ammunition he kept in his duty bag in his cruiser. Or, for that matter, how many bodies and how many atrocities there had to have been, between here and Nipawin.

He kept the conversation going, not really knowing if it would do any good. "Neither have I. I never cared for cities. Now, give me the wide-open wilderness, and I'm a happy man. Bob Fraser and I tangled with more bears than people, it seems, looking back."

"Sergeant Fraser?"

Bob smiled a little to himself, then wiped it off his face as he turned back to set the plate on the table. He'd take the rest of the meat around to the others here in a moment. "That's right. He was my partner."

"I'm sorry for your loss, sir," Turnbull replied, formally, looking green around the gills at the moose.

Buck wanted to laugh. Not because it was the wrong thing to say, but because said 'loss' apparently decided to haunt him while he was busy taking a leak. That, and it seemed a little strange to talk about loss when every single person here had lost a whole world. Still, it was an encouraging sentiment -- the kid was talking, at least. "It is a hell of a thing, isn't it? Lose my partner and then there's an apocalypse. Still, it could be worse."

Turnbull looked at him for a long moment.

"Go ahead, say it," Buck said.

"My detachment, my entire _town_ , was overrun in less time than it takes to lose a curling match," Turnbull said, and there was a quaver in his voice. "My best friend shot himself with my service pistol in front of me. I don't know where..." He stopped, took a shaking breath and went on, "And all of those... those _people_..." There was a long moment where Turnbull was clearly struggling for composure, jaw knotted, before he finished, "I... fail, sir, to understand how it could be much worse than it is."

Buck nodded, letting the silence fall in respectful deference to the facts for a moment.

He wasn't very good at comforting people sometimes, but at least this time, he knew the right thing to say.

"You could be dead, along with him and the rest of them." Buck tapped the table with his knuckles. "It's not a crime to survive, son. Now, eat. Drink a lot of water, you're probably still dehydrated. I'm afraid that I won't be able to give you much recovery time, because first thing tomorrow, we're going to start searching for survivors."

Buck didn't spring the news that it was going to involve perhaps finding his dead partner's son, a girl and two Yanks floating on Lake Michigan. He didn't want to think too hard about his flight into insanity just yet.


	84. ...willie...

The prevailing sound was crying.

The survivors had been culled. The tattered remains of the group had piled into the vehicles, some of them had dogs in 'em, but Dewey knew not all of the dog pack had made it in, either. He knew they had lost people. More than he saw go down, as far as he could see of the other cars from the passenger seat in the low light. It was dark enough now to evidence a sickly orange cast to the sky from the fires to the south.

Firebombs. Dewey had to wonder grimly if they all wouldn't have been better off staying in the city for those. If maybe anything was better than watching their community drop one by one. Better than the ache that shot through him with every bump in the road, the certainty that people he cared about were just eaten, and the fear of how long it would be until he was dead or one of them.

It was sick chaos. The melee was too thick for him to have stock of every death, but he knew Garces had been torn through a window before he'd known what hit him. Thank God the man's grandson had already been thrown into one of the cars. That didn't save his wife from witnessing the man torn apart on the lawn and passed around like Sunday dinner.

Dewey had seen Laura dragged, screaming, into one of the vans. Brandi had overpowered her easily. Thankfully. God. Dewey got it, he _did_ , but Sheryl was _gone_ and no amount of trying to claw her way back into that building was gonna save her. One of the bank tellers whose name he never learned had been overrun by about five of the damn things on his way out the back, Dewey had charged past that horrific spectacle himself.

Tyler had gone down in the first swell of zombies through the windows. Frozen up. Managed to pull it out at the last second and get the zombie off of Willie, but he'd spent his ammo on the thing's arm. Missed. At _close-range_. Another one devoured right there as they fled.

Willie. Oh God, Willie.

Elaine was damn near catatonic back there, staring off some where miles away and rocking the kid, cradling him to her chest.

There was a big chunk missing from the kid's wrist. They'd stuffed a discarded t-shirt around the wound after Elaine had made it perfectly clear she was going to defy her own orders and bring him with her. She'd taken out zombies like a damn hero, tearing her way through to keep the others moving out the back.

Something in her just snapped when she saw that kid covered in blood.

Willie was sobbing uncontrollably, wailing like he was still actively being bitten and not just bleeding all over the back of a car whose owner was in pieces, miles away now. Dewey knew the kid was young. Knew it, but the way the kid had projected himself, Dewey hadn't _felt_ it until now. No one in the car spoke. The weight of knowing that kid could turn at any minute was enough to keep every jaw in the car firmly shut.

Someone would have to say it eventually. No one was willing.

The fire of civilization raged behind them. They drove for the shore, some unspoken drive to reach for their original plan to head for Lake Michigan. Whose idea was it, again?

Were they still alive?

He shared a glance with Stewart in the driver's seat in the half-dark. No words, but he understood it. They'd known most of these people for a matter of _hours_ , but every last one they lost was a bigger hole in the ones that went on.

Dewey tugged down his own sleeve before thunking his forehead to the passenger side window.


	85. ...crawl...

"Son, there's something I should've told you a long time ago."

Fraser whimpered and jerked, rattling the cuffs; he'd been in some kind of sleep. Fevered. Dreaming. Perhaps he still was. The sound he made was a question; his mouth tasted like copper and mold and for a moment he couldn't press the sound into words.

"And I'm not going to unless you live through this."

 _What?!_ The bubble of several indignant thoughts expanded and popped. All Fraser had was another noise, a groan, and something told him it was a very bad idea indeed to make a noise like that.

"Don't make sounds like that, son. The Yanks might get the wrong idea." The sentence wavered in pitch. Split, as though spoken by three people at once.

Fraser's eyes snapped open to look at his father, and he scrambled back, panting.

"Or the right one."

Bob Fraser stood before him tall in ruined red serge. Soaked to the skin. Tinged green-mold and decay from uniform to pale, clammy skin to hair and half-stetson.

The pattern of green rot shifted and _crawled_ before Fraser's eyes.

"Heavens, Benton," Bob said, quietly, looking down at himself, seemingly unaware that his son was slowly losing his mind to a raging fever. He looks back up, mouth pursed. "Pull yourself together."

Fraser closed his eyes, tight, trying to ward off the spike of heartache that went with that tone, that look; like he wasn't _trying_ , like he wasn't fighting for his _life_. Victoria's offer was starting to sound better and better; he was exhausted, he was in pain. He was dying. Release seemed, to his burning mind, to become an option.

"What are you just sitting there for, like a bump on a log? Do something!" Bob said, presumably to Ray. One of the Rays. Fraser had lost track of which was watching over him; sometimes, it seemed the only point of something bearable in this besides his own hallucinations was the occasional touch, something to remind him he was still alive, still... still...

He didn't know.

Breathing.

Still breathing.

Finally, mercilessly, mercifully, blackness crept in, and Fraser lost consciousness to the distant sound of his father's voice, overlapping Ray's, discordant harmonies, calling his name in fear.


	86. ...no...

_"Nononono, c'mon, c'mon, wake up."_

It was a steady litany, broken only by prayers, and he did the best he could to tune out Frannie freaking out and Kowalski trying to talk her down or outshout her or whatever the fuck, and concentrated on the deadweight man cradled against him.

Fraser's wet head lolled lifelessly back against his shoulder when Ray shifted, and his legs were actually sprawled outside of the tiny shower, and Ray was shivering under the stream of cold water pouring down on them. He could still feel the heat of Fraser through his wet clothes, and no human being should have ever been that burning hot.

"I will go _through you_ , Kowalski, so you better _move_!" It started off as a statement and ended as a scream, desperate and terrified and Ray jumped half out of his skin. God, he was scared too, he was fucking scared out of his mind that Fraser was going to wake up, turn around and _bite_ him, but he was gonna fight to the last to make sure that didn't happen.

"C'mon, Benny. Don't you dare drop dead on me," he whispered, knowing it wasn't going to be heard.

He tightened his grip when Frannie broke through the front line of Kowalski, eyes huge, nearly snarling. She stepped over those legs and grabbed Ray's arm, and then tried to drag on it, her voice still pitched to a frantic, frightened scream. "Let go! Let go, let go... _let go_ , Ray!"

"Frannie!" Kowalski got a grip on her upper arms and with some effort pulled her back. "Frannie, knock it off, you're not helping!"

"THAT'S MY BROTHER!" she snarled back, reaching back to slap at Kowalski, wild.

"Frannie, he's not dead yet!" Ray tried to plead, and God, her voice was like razors in his chest, 'cause he wanted to _fix this_ , make it better, take care of her, but she wasn't the one burning up alive.

"If it's you or him, _screw him_ ," she snapped back, still fighting against Kowalski. If not for the sheer hurt in her voice, Ray would have wondered who turned his sister into a monster, but he got it. Jesus, he got it.

"He saved us," Kowalski said, loosening his grip a little as she started calming down. "Hey, Frannie, he _saved us_ , he got hurt _saving us_."

She jerked free, then shoved Kowalski in the chest. "You pick up that gun, Kowalski. You pick up that gun, and if he goes for my brother's neck and you don't use it, I'll kill you myself," she said, choked and resolved and shaking. She looked back at Ray again, and her mouth twisted in misery, and then she shoved past Kowalski and headed back above.

"Let me take him," Kowalski said, after a long moment where they heard Frannie retching up dinner outside on deck. "That way, if..."

"We'll trade off," Ray said, trying to breathe past the solid pain in his chest and throat and guts, leaning his cheek against Fraser's head for a moment, working his jaw and closing his eyes.

"Okay," Kowalski said, pulling out his gun and settling uncaring in the puddle in the hallway. "We'll do that."


	87. ...shadows...

"It's a fine mess, Caroline. A fine mess." Bob Fraser cleared the snow away from Caroline's picture, looking down into the monochrome of her face.

The snow of the afterlife drifted on the cutting wind. Bob had yet to figure out how it was he could feel it.

"I'd ask you to forgive me for being glad you're not here to see it, but I'm not. We could've held off the undead together, you and I. Maybe Buck. I'm not sure I want to invite him to our survival party. He's developed something of a flatulence problem in his old age." Bob sighed. "Who am I kidding? Of course he's invited. If I didn't chase him off for having eyes for you, I'm hardly going to now just because he's doing his best impression of a musk ox."

There was no response. Bob had grown used to that since he'd died. He often spoke to Caroline in hopes she could hear, a habit he'd picked up posthumously. It wouldn't have done to be caught talking to himself when he was alive. Someone might've chalked it up to insanity running in the family and relegated him to the cabbage leaves with Tiberius, and then where would his career have been?

Ah, well. Bob supposed he was making it up to her now.

"Not that he couldn't let go with the best of them when he was young. Did I ever tell you about the time he lost a bet and ended up creeping back into camp naked as the day he was born? Nobody would have been the wiser if it weren't for the sauerkraut we had for dinner--" Bob blinked, shaking his head. "No. Never mind. You never were much for that kind of story."

He looked off, watching the snow for a little while.

"I'm afraid, Caroline," he managed, the tightness in his voice something he couldn't shove back. "Afraid for our son, not to mention our world. It's... it's bad. I could be leading my partner to a dead man. Dead, if he's lucky. I'm ashamed to say that I'm afraid if Benton dies, he'll... he'll be able to see you when I can't."

The wind took away the confession. He slid fingertips around the edge of her portrait, blindly, still staring into bright white.

"I've failed you both so many times. I won't, this time."

Distantly, the snow took form. A shadow; amongst a blanket of white, a shadow sure as Hell stuck out. It disappeared as quickly as it had come.

Bob squinted, watching the mirage long after it had gone.


	88. ...sure...

Dirt road had given way to pavement and the lines that passed threatened to hypnotize him.

Dewey couldn't make himself look back at Willie yet, and sometime back the boy had stopped wailing and passed out. The fact that they lived in a world where that was even more frightening made Dewey want to jump out of the moving car just to see what the pavement would do to him.

Elaine still rocked the boy, probably crying, but Hell if she made any more noises about it. Something about the zombie apocalypse inspired the ability to cry silently, Dewey guessed. He kinda wished he could, too. If anything warranted tears, it was this, but none were coming.

"Were you planning on speaking up?" It was Stewart, still driving, and even without looking over Dewey knew the man didn't take his eyes off the road to whisper the question.

Dewey shut his eyes. Damn. _Damn._ He didn't figure they could go much longer without dealing with it. Not with that much blood. But he'd hoped. "Yeah."

"You sure about that?"

At that, Dewey did look over, trying not to flash the hurt on his face and failing.

The expression he got back was lined with regret. "Sorry, man. I just-- I'm sorry."

Sighing, Dewey shook his head before thunking it back to the window.

Just a little while longer.


	89. ...pulse...

"Still here, buddy, not gonna just let you go all grargh-brains on us, nu uh."

Kowalski wasn't even sure he was speaking anymore, but he kept on anyway. Fraser was still breathing, laying propped against his chest; it seemed to keep him breathing easier, anyway, even if it was still faint and shallow.

He knew Vecchio was there somewhere, but he was too exhausted to open his eyes.

"I mean, think about it. We're goin' north, right, and you Mountie people are from up north, so you can't die. We're not that far from Canada, Frase, you gotta live so we can get there..."

He knew better than to expect an answer. Fraser had been dead out for hours now, burning and breathing too light, and Kowalski was waiting for... for something to break. The fever or Fraser. Whichever could hold out longer. Knew which one he wanted it to be, but he waited for either, and he knew Vecchio had the gun.

"Besides, if I gotta... gotta leave behind Chicago, I'll need someone to show me around up there. And you're the only Canadian I know."

Kowalski rubbed his face, unabashedly, against Fraser's hair, brushing past a temple...

 _Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit..._

"What?" Vecchio asked, a hushed and sharp whisper, startling Kowalski to being actually _conscious_ , green eyes wide open in the faint light from their little improvised flashlight lamp, hours before the dawn.

"He's cold," Kowalski said, trying to keep the panic out of his voice as he felt Fraser's neck for a pulse and oh, fuck fuck fuck, it wasn't fucking _there_ , nonono, c'mon, c'mon...

...

He found it. A little thready under his fingers, but...

"What?!" Vecchio asked again, fear making his voice sharp.

"Pulse. He has one." Kowalski huffed a few hard breaths in and out, his eyes stinging, heart pounding. "The fever broke first."

Vecchio just about shattered at that, coming over and laying a hand against Fraser's forehead, and then he just sank down, forehead against the Mountie's chest, breath hitched near to sobs.

Neither of them knew it meant something worse was coming.


	90. ...boy...

Even as a small boy, taking the news of his mother's death, Bob Fraser's son had never looked to him so fragile.

Dark hair stuck up wild, and Benton was so very pale, so exceptionally vulnerable in that bunk. But alive, and not screaming or thrashing or burning up or seeing things that weren't there. Unless one counted Bob himself, but as far as he could tell, he wasn't an hallucination.

For the first time during the night, the Yanks had slipped away to grab some food and get cleaned up, and that left them briefly alone.

Bob was not a mushy sort of man. He hadn't been absent for all of Benton's life, after all; those times that he'd been there for it, he had always found it best when the boy was sick to teach him how to work through it with chin up and boots on, but when he sat his ghostly backside on the edge of that bunk, he couldn't help it. He settled a hand at his son's forehead.

Blue eyes opened the tiniest fraction. Benton was awake, though from the looks of it, only just. His eyebrows drew together in fuzzied confusion as Bob pet softly at his son's forehead.

"Hello, son."

Benton didn't answer, only huffed a breath, half-incredulity, half something else.

Bob turned his hand to some of that wild hair, as though he could reorder it, though of course it didn't move. The act should have felt strange. On a number of levels, it did, but he couldn't make it matter right now. "I don't know how much of this you'll remember, Benton, but I've been in touch with my old partner. You remember him, don't you? Of course you do, of course. Buck Frobisher."

He couldn't tell if the blinking meant that Benton didn't actually remember him at all or just couldn't believe his father seemed to be launching into old patrol stories, but Bob continued.

"Best partner a man could ever have. A little flatulent these days, but beggars can't be choosers, especially not with zombies about. I need you to hold on until he gets here, son. I don't know how we'll pull this all together yet, Benton, but I know that we will." It was strange, how it felt for all the world like he really was reordering his son's hair. It seemed to stick. Maybe there was more to this haunting thing than he knew.

Those blue eyes flashed confusion again, and it seemed to Bob that Benton nodded. He seemed so damned _young_ , like this.

"That's my boy," Bob whispered, taking back his hand to fold it awkwardly in his lap.


	91. ...click...

Thomas Dewey didn't think the sun would ever come up.

Of course it would. But he never wanted it to.

Time marched on. Willie woke up again, his panicked struggling with Elaine some kind of heartrending. Fever had taken hold quickly - accounts from some of the survivors when they compared stories had made it clear that the sickness overtook some quicker and more fiercely than others, and Willie _was_ very young - and it seemed the boy was going through bouts of hysteria and hallucinations, talking to people that weren't there. Elaine responded where she could, often pretending to be whoever it was.

Fields and farmland passed as they drove. A funeral procession of cars, and the beams from headlights caught... things in the dark. Cast shadows, sometimes. The shadows shambled and moved.

Sometimes, it would catch and reflect light in the eyes of some wild thing. Some moving thing. Some thing too tall and wrongly shaped to be deer.

Dewey thought he'd hit capacity for creep days back, but that sight stood even his hair on end.

Twilight of dawn was rapidly approaching. Willie was calling for his mother. Dewey pulled his sleeve down.

Just a little while longer.

Willie twitched and jerked in Elaine's arms, and he heard the first heartbroken noise out of her in a while when he could hear the... oh, _God_... clicking of teeth.

Dewey spun around in his seat.

Willie was biting at the air. Elaine had dropped him to the floor and covered her mouth in horror.

"Signal the others. Stop the car."


	92. ...acceptance...

"No. You're not putting him out, you're not _doing_ it."

Elaine was in his face the second he opened the hatchback of the SUV, and God, Dewey got it, he really fucking did, and it _hurt_. Tears streamed down her face, but God, even now she wasn't shrill. Just fierce. A better leader than Dewey would ever have made.

"Elaine."

"And you're damn sure not _shooting_ him."

"I need you to listen to me--"

"No."

 _"Elaine."_

Willie rolled over, crawling for the opened hatchback, and Dewey got the bottom door open just in time for the boy to retch his guts up over the side.

Biting at nothing in between heaves.

The other cars had pulled over, and a bunch of faces were pressed against the inside of windows, just watching them. The scant light and the fact that they'd seen walking dead intermittently as they drove kept most people inside even though they knew what this probably meant. Some did risk it, though, firearms in hand. Brandi. Steve. A couple of guys whose names Dewey never learned. Reems, which was really _stupid_ considering how important he was. Stewart was out of their car, too, lingering back.

There was an 'Ah, _God_ ' from somebody as the small group walked up.

Elaine scrambled out of the back of the car to grab hold of Dewey's shirt. Like if she could shake him hard enough, Willie's bite would disappear. "You can't have him. He's-- he's just a _kid_ \-- you can't toss him out to die alone, I won't let you--"

Dewey could've shaken her off him. He didn't. "--God, Elaine, do you think anybody _wants_ this? I won't--"

"If you don't want him, then _I'm_ going with him!"

Dewey shut his eyes, letting go of a cracked little noise. He flexed the fingers of his left hand slowly, feelin the tack of clotting blood between his fingers. Something inside him that had been numb since the seige burned and ached. He took a shaky breath, opening his eyes to glance at Stewart, earning him a grim nod in return.

It took everything he had to look Elaine in the eye. Stages of grief, and all that. Skipped over most of 'em on the drive here, but he wasn't so sure he was ready for acceptance.

Acceptance was on him anyway.

"I'm going with him." He raised his left arm, the motion pulling back a bloodied sleeve to reveal the half-moon bite at his wrist, three or four inches down from his thumb. Not terribly deep. It didn't have to be. The skin around it was angry, red, the edges were already turning black. The bite itself was numb.

Brandi covered her mouth with one hand, sobbing just once. Stewart looked away. Behind them, Willie had curled into a fetal ball.

Elaine dropped her hands from his shirt and stared at him.


	93. ...dawn...

Anxiety had a stranglehold on Dewey's gut, and there were a lot of people crying.

A few of the guys had set up a kind of watch with guns and several more had filed out of the cars to say goodbye. A lot of them were afraid to touch, and Dewey couldn't blame them. There were a lot of tears. Most people didn't know him, just Willie, so it was the kid that had the most goodbyes. Some people pet his head or his arm. Others just whispered their goodbyes to him, keeping back. The kid had calmed down some, and he was semi-lucid if half-conscious, which was a blessing, Dewey figured.

Dewey's goodbyes were shorter. Stewart gave him some bottles of water and a clap on the shoulder, along with a look that had lingered until they were grasping each other in a hug. Brothers in arms. No words.

Steve gave him his empty flask, and a sad kind of shrug. Dewey shook his hand.

Laura was still fucked up over Sheryl, so all she had were more hysterical tears. She was probably afraid to touch him, based on how she stiffened when he hugged her, but she still left tear stains at his shoulder. He pet her hair, before Stewart led her away.

Blue had grasped his forearm, a weird sort of handshake, and Dewey returned it. "So what _is_ your real name, man?" Dewey asked as they squeezed.

"Blue," he replied with a flash of a smile.

Dewey huffed a laugh and nodded, releasing that arm and letting his eyes fall on Brandi.

She was on him before he knew what hit him, and with an 'oof' and a huffed laugh, Thomas Dewey was buried in a bear hug. He pat her back awkwardly as she squeezed him, actually _picking him up_ off the ground, sobbing.

"There, there," he managed with the amount of air he could actually get in, patting her back again.

"I'm going to _miss you_ ," she breathed out before finally letting his feet touch the ground again.

Dewey caught his breath for a moment, clapping her shoulder, too. "You'll be fine. Just aim for the brain and don't let anybody call you heshe, or I'll come back from the dead and make 'em answer to me, okay?"

"You know it." Brandi's lip wobbled and she covered her mouth, walking away to cry with Laura.

Last one.

Elaine was cradling Willie, and when Dewey turned to her, she stood up from the tailgate, the boy still draped possessively in her arms. The others backed away, several people crying louder knowing that this was it. Willie was shivering in her arms, but appeared to be drifting back toward unconsciousness.

She looked down into his face, her own distorting for a moment in grief. She placed the boy in Dewey's arms like she would a newborn, and pulled a pistol from her belt, making to put it in Dewey's belt instead.

"Keep it," he whispered, shaking his head. "Need every bullet for them."

"But--"

He shook his head again. She took it back.

"Take care of them, okay? You-- you take _care_ of them." His voice was starting to crack, and Willie had gone limp once the transfer was made.

"I promise." Elaine nodded. "Take care of _him_."

"I promise."

She reached up, ordering a couple of strands of Dewey's hair, not quite looking him in the eye. She dropped her hand and brushed a touch down Willie's cheek.

Then, she wrapped arms around herself. "--Goodbye."

Dewey didn't say it back.

He held Willie as the other living slowly filtered back into their cars.

Faces against windows got smaller and smaller until they were gone.

Dewey and Willie were alone with the dawn.


	94. ...cradle...

"I swear they're recruiting them out of the cradle these days."

"--hello to you, too, Bob."

"Honestly, I don't know how the Canadian people sleep at night, with a force of pimply, hormonal tweens the only thing standing between them and anarchy." Bob crossed his arms with a look of dour disapproval on his face.

"He's twenty-two. He's older than you were just out of Depot." Buck Frobisher eyed his old partner in the early morning light, as his truck was defrosting. His old, dead partner. His very _pale_ , old, dead partner. "And for that matter, I'd say sleeping at night's probably long gone out the window now. What the Hell happened to you? You look like you've just seen-- well. You know the saying."

"A ghost? Maybe I have."

"Something else we have in common. You didn't answer my question."

"Never mind that. Are you out of your mind, sending that boy? Why aren't you going yourself? He should be somewhere delivering pizzas for pocket money, not picking up your slack in a vital part of the plan to save my son!"

"That boy managed to claw his way past Buffalo Narrows from _Nipawin_ with nothing but his wits, his weapon, and a cruiser the business end of which he tells me gave him that concussion. A feat worthy of you in your prime, Robert Fraser, so don't give me that. Besides that, I sent him north. I? I am going south. Now tell me what happened. You always complained that I never got sick of the sound of my own voice, you may as well shut me up by answering my question."

Bob gave him a level glare, frowning.

Buck looked back, eyebrows up. He was too damn tired to play this game today. Besides, Marilyn had already torn a strip out of his hide for sending the kid anywhere anyway in that shape; the sun was barely up, and his metaphorical ass still felt sore from the verbal spanking.

When Bob rolled his eyes and sighed, Buck kept the smirk internal.

"I'm not sure. Something... something's..." Bob was looking pretty far away. "Something's not right. I don't know what it is yet, but there's nothing I can do about it. I'm not even sure... maybe I'm just imagining things in my old age, Buck."

"Senility carries over into the afterlife? Remind me not to die any time soon."

"If you need a reminder, you have more to worry about than senility."

They chuckled, Buck against his own pooling dread at that frankly _creepy_ answer to his question. What the Hell could they do? Jump at shadows?

He huffed out a breath, looking up at Bob with tired warmth. "How's Benton?"

"Alive," came the strangely immediate answer, Bob looking haunted all over again. "Alive. So are the three Yanks. Haven't met a girl that annoying since the squeaky-voiced librarian Caroline set you up with. I wonder if she'd make the same face if you set her hair on fire, too."

"Not one of my better dates."

"No. Legendary, nonetheless. No woman needs that much hairspray. A moot point now, I suppose."

"Indeed." Bob removed his stetson - Great Scott, was the thing clipped at the back? Buck must have been tired, to have only just noticed that - and pressed it to his chest, staring off again. "It's the damndest thing, Buck. I can't shake the feeling I'm being watched." A beat passed, the sheer _creep_ of that statement as thick as molasses. "I wish Caroline were here."

The hair at the back of his neck stood on end. Not knowing what the Hell else to do, Buck reached over and patted his partner's shoulder.


	95. ...mend...

"Okay. So, it's not the zombie-thing. I mean, do the math: He was okay for a whole day, and now he's on the mend, and people who get this thing don't get better."

Frannie wanted to be anywhere else in the universe.

It wasn't that she didn't hear the words. It wasn't even that she wanted anything bad to happen to Fraser. It was the ever-increasing desperation of the Rays to write this off as something else that was terrifying; it was the sheer oppression of knowing that she wasn't supposed to speak up, that if she did, they were just going to _argue_ with her and not listen and she was outnumbered two on one. The closest thing she had to an ally was the guy they were _talking_ about. Her own brother wouldn't even listen.

"Or it's the last stage," Frannie said, despite it, keeping her head down and holding onto her dog for courage.

"Or it's not," Kowalski argued, right on cue. "I mean, it's not like we _know_ for sure how this thing happens when it runs its course, right?"

Her brother mostly stayed out of it, at least, hovering nervously around Fraser. Frannie was rapidly approaching the point where she couldn't even jump anymore when the Mountie shifted on the bed, even if she felt her throat close off every single time Ray coaxed Fraser into sipping water or ramen broth, putting himself into the range where teeth could sink into his skin.

They'd been going at this for awhile; now that the fever had broken, Kowalski was driving the boat again, instead of just letting it drift while he traded shifts with Ray. Frannie sat just behind him in the small, sunken kitchenette, and could see both him on the raised deck where the steering wheel was, and down into the forward cabin where Ray was.

She watched Ray for a long moment, wearing borrowed clothes that hung off his skinny body, thinning hair everywhere, speaking soft and gentle to a guy who could turn around and _kill him_ , and wondered when her brother started caring more about a guy he just met than her.

 _Maybe when you started treating him like Pop,_ the little voice in the back of her head said, reminding her of a thousand times before now when she reminded him that she was a big girl, to butt out, to stop treating her like a kid, to quit telling her to budget when she had a little extra money, that she was almost thirty and he needed to treat her with _respect_ and to stop whining so much about work 'cause it's not like he didn't get the house in the will.

Mostly, she got what she wanted. Now, she had to live with it.

 _Maybe we can go back to before,_ she thought.

"I don't know," Frannie finally said. The empty static on the marine radio didn't help matters any, just made things even more lonely. She rubbed behind the dog's ears, shaking her head. "Okay? I don't know."

Kowalski was about to answer, something in his face gone guarded and wary and softer, like he was trying to listen and waiting for her to snap at him if he did, when they both jumped to the sound of commotion below.

Ray had startled back, wide-eyed and trembling.

Fraser was on the bunk, clawing into the mattress, looking terrified out of his mind.

The clicking became audible.

Click. Click.

Frannie was moving, screaming, dashing in there and grabbing her brother and dragging him for the deck before she even realized it.

It was his _teeth_.


	96. ...offered...

"What now, huh?! WHAT NOW?!" Frannie shook her brother like a rag doll, trying to shake some sense into him, unable and unwilling to keep her voice down.

Kowalski was still shaking, Ray was still shaking, everyone was shaking. And down below, they could hear Fraser thrashing around, though thank God they couldn't hear his teeth clicking together, snapping at nothing.

"He's still alive, Frannie," Ray tried to say, refusing to make eye contact.

"You wanna keep telling me it's not that?!" She gave him another shake. "Now what, Ray? Now what, are we going to pretend he's going to be just fine?"

Kowalski had gone in there. Fraser was lucid enough to tip his head back, even if he couldn't seem to control his jaw, and Ray held the gun on him with a gut-wrenchingly miserable look in his eyes, and Kowalski tied Fraser's hands with t-shirt wrapped marine rope.

Frannie wasn't sure if she was more horrified, disgusted or _sorry_. God, like she wanted the Mountie to die. Like she wanted any of this to happen, like she wanted the damn world to end in the first place. But some part of her that she hated right now was almost relieved to be _right_ about something.

"I don't know," he finally said, reaching up to pass a hand down over his eyes.

"Want me to go shoot him? Put one between his eyes without warning?" Kowalski asked from the sidelines, quietly. Dangerously. Both Vecchios looked up in unison, wide-eyed looks of disbelief, and he winced and deflated. "Sorry. I just... he isn't dead yet. I can tie him down better, maybe, but he's not dead yet, and I can't..."

Frannie flinched, and she felt her guts churn again.

"You want to put him down, Frannie? You do it," Kowalski said, his mouth twisted in pain. He took his gun out and offered it over.

Frannie's hand was shaking hard when she took it, and she didn't look back when Ray broke from his daze to start after her, going _nonononono_ in a voice that could cut steel.


	97. ...vulnerable...

She probably could have fallen in love with him in a different world. Handsome, tall, blue eyes and well-cut features? And a _uniform_? In a flash, she thought about how it could have happened, and then reality came crashing in with another click.

He was obviously in pain, gulping for air and broken out into a fresh sweat, head lolling on the pillow. When he wasn't clicking, he was gasping, and Frannie tried to tell herself a lot of things; that this was something he would want. That it would keep them safe. That he was obviously suffering and this would end it. That the world was a different place now, and there wasn't room for hesitation.

His eyes opened and he stared at her, and Frannie choked on a sob, the gun shaking so hard in her hand that it rattled.

"I have to," she said, and she could hear her brother and Kowalski fighting on deck, her brother raging and Kowalski mostly silent absent some grunts, and she swallowed again.

"I have to," she said again, looking at Fraser's pale, frightened, exhausted face and her breath kept catching, but she didn't cry. Not this time. She didn't know if she even had any tears left; what were they worth to express pain when pain was all that was left in the world?

"Victoria?" he asked, between gasps and clicks, a hopeful note. He twisted towards her, drawing his knees up against pain, tried to reach, and Frannie edged backwards. "I--" He was cut off by another click, another spasm of pain, but the eyes on her were so... so...

Hopeful. Vulnerable. Desperate. Pleading. Scared.

Frannie tried to raise the gun, and finally she got it up, but she was shaking so hard she had to step closer again and Fraser _recoiled_ , raw hurt and fear in his expression, trying to form words.

"...Vic...toria...?"

Frannie managed to hold on. Hold on. God, why did he have to look so... so...

So human?

She dropped her arm and bolted, accidentally slamming her arm into the frame of the door, a sound of grief clawing its way out of her throat. She dropped the gun on deck, and stared rage at Kowalski for... for... for _doing that_ to her, and tried not to look at her brother, being held back by his arms.

"Fuck you, Kowalski," she spat, and he flinched. She went to the edge of the deck, in case she started retching again.

The only sound worse than Fraser's all-too-human plea was the sound of her brother's all-too-human sobs behind her.


	98. ...beyond...

Audrey McKenna had lost track of the days.

It seemed years since the delirium had lifted, and the knowledge that her fever had _broken_ filtered in.

She was weak. Battered, perpetually exhausted, starving, and still experienced bouts of confusion and loss of consciousness. Sometimes she forgot who and what she was running from; she could only think of Rosewell as being somewhere _back there_ , whatever direction _back there_ was beyond her. North, South, East, West. She didn't know the difference. But she was getting better. Better, in frightening senses of the word, in ways she didn't understand and didn't know how to predict.

Sometimes it seemed as though she would forget who she was entirely. Her vision would shift and change. The tips of her fingers and toes would go numb, and something would seem to call to her. She didn't know what. It tasted like pennies and something else. Earthy. Rotten.

That taste had faded for the moment. These thoughts swirled as reality settled on her waking mind, and before it had a chance to fully land, she wondered if it hadn't been a dream. If the fading bouts of consciousness in the last little while had been real at all. Surely no one could be alive, after that?

How much of what she had seen had been real?

Was the fever? Maybe... maybe it had been something else? She felt beaten down. Too... too hurt, though it seemed the scrapes at her hands and knees no longer ached. The world still smelled wrong. Smelled more... more _real_ , more... organic. The dawn light that had been muted red through her eyelids seemed harsh and angry when she opened them; still, her vision sharpened instantly.

However she had come to pass out, she couldn't remember. Nor did she know how long she had slept, but it seemed rather trivial in comparison to the fact that she was partially in the shadow of a rosebush.

In the open.

And there was motion over there.

The adrenaline spike sent her sitting up and scrambling backwards into the bush; her fear had no logic, but the bush most certainly had thorns, many of which slid neatly into her flesh through her battered clothing.

Her hand slammed over her mouth kept back the instinct to scream. The world spun for a moment. She forced herself to breathe through her nose.

Zombies shambled in the street. Wherever Audrey had woken up, it was in someone's side yard. She was relatively hidden from view, but she knew by now that view was the least of a zombie's tracking ability. A cursory glance at her surroundings told her that in her fevered stupor she had probably attempted to make it to the corrugated shed across the grass from here, but she must have collapsed before she made it.

It didn't make sense.

She must have been in the open for hours. Why hadn't they smelled her?

 

Oh.

Oh, no.

Audrey lost a sob past her hand, something she didn't have in her to pray that the zombies couldn't hear.

She pulled her hand away from her own mouth to look at her wrist. The half-moon impression left no doubt as to what had been real. Ugly, scarred, red and irrefutable evidence of infection that she had seen by now was worse than a _death sentence_.

What she didn't understand was why it was healing.

One of the shamblers in the street stopped to eye her curiously across the grass. Head cocked to the side in a frightening display of the intelligence of curiosity. Audrey froze in terror as the thing sniffed the air; it was female. Naked. Part of her neck was missing, which made the headtilt all the more morbid; other than that, the creature looked pristine, aside from dead.

It grunted at Audrey before it seemed to lose interest, shambling in the opposite direction.


	99. ...instead...

The kid was getting heavy, and this was the loneliest road in the history of fucking roads.

The signs said the others had dropped him off just outside of Lebanon, and Dewey didn't know enough about foreign wars to wonder if that was some kind of omen. He just knew his arms were getting tired, and bitching about that in his head stopped him from counting down the hours the kid must have.

He refused to think about his own.

Miles and miles of not a lot surrounded him and all he had was internal bitching. The road was lonely. But at least it wasn't zombie-ridden.

He got jumpier and jumpier the closer he trudged toward buildings, and maybe Willie could feel it, Dewey didn't know, but the kid was stirring in his arms. It was stupid. They needed shelter, it only made sense, but Dewey had been a coward and a dumbass and had refused that gun. He'd pretended it was because they needed to keep their bullets. That was true. It was. But it was also because he didn't wanna be able to put a bullet in his own brain. Or the kid's.

Willie stirred and then started to struggle, and Dewey didn't have the arm strength after carrying the kid as far as he had to subdue it.

"Mom-- Momma--"

Ah, _God_.

It was funny, the things that were hard-wired in somebody after a life of civilization. That even once Dewey _knew_ the likelihood of a car driving down this road was next to nil, he _still_ staggered over to the shoulder to lay the kid down in the grass. It was softer, anyway. He took off his jacket, bloodied in places but it didn't matter now, and stuffed it under the kid's head.

He planted his ass in the dew-covered ground and absolutely refused to listen to the irreverent asshole voice in his head that wanted to whisper some pun involving his name.

The kid twitched and cried, and Dewey thought about trying to gag him somehow.

Instead, he reached over and pet Willie's arm.

Willie twitched some more and picked up his biting at nothing, the click of teeth making him want to gag the kid even more.

Instead, he kept petting and shushed quietly.

Willie's eyes shot open, bloodshot and starting to look _wrong_. It made him want to put the kid out of his misery.

Instead, Dewey looked back.


	100. ...sixteen...

The building was quiet; there were no tracks in the snow around it, aside his own. It was an encouraging sign that the Cluff Lake Airport, servicing the Cluff Lake uranium mine, might still have a working radio system. Turnbull's cruiser had been rescued at the same time he had been, but his radio had very little range without a repeater. This one would, with any luck, be operational. It had a high antenna. It might have enough range to reach _someone_.

He couldn't understand why the idea of potentially contacting other living beings right now seemed so far beyond his reach.

The sergeant had asked for him well before dawn, and after an hour, tea, breakfast, maps, provisions and another conversation that barely registered, he'd cut Turnbull loose with his cruiser and told him to go find them an airplane. And if he could find them a pilot, all the better.

It was a very tall order. Likely even an impossible one. Frobisher had no battle plan for him, aside to try Cluff Lake first, and that left Turnbull to his own devices and with a three hour drive over a road that was barely more than a glorified path northwards. Before Nipawin fell, he would have been all right with that; improvising and thinking around a problem. Now, he felt adrift; dazed and lost and woefully under-qualified.

Most of the mine's operations, from what he could guess from Frobisher's map, were on the other side of the lake. But not all.

The residential building he passed had seemed quiet; peaceful.

There were vehicles parked beside it. And feeling quiet panic crawling through every bone in his body, he'd stopped his cruiser on the road and stared at it, willing living people to come out, praying that the undead wouldn't. Sat for several minutes. Maybe they were alive. Maybe they had all gathered into a few vehicles and driven elsewhere. Maybe they had abandoned the mine and taken off in planes.

Maybe. Maybe.

The door was closed.

Turnbull couldn't make himself go and open it.

At least he could handle this door. He still didn't trust his own balance, or his knees to hold him through anything heavier than walking, so he shot the lock off of the door to the airport's tiny office, and nearly leaped out of his skin at it even having been the one pulling the trigger, a spike of nausea slamming him in the gut and his headache roaring again from where acetaminophen had knocked it down to bearable.

He had to take a moment to breathe it off, queasy.

 _Not now. Not now._ Now wasn't the time.

It still felt like a nightmare, not a reality, when Turnbull shoved the door in with a foot, bringing his firearm down to a ready position and breathing hard through his nose. Telling himself there wasn't likely anything here did little for his nerves.

It was a small office. The sunlight reflecting off of the snow cast some illumination into the otherwise boarded up space.

He kept wanting to look behind him.

The snow crunched under his boots as he edged closer, breath trembling even though his hand was steady.

He kept wanting to look behind him.

The doorframe passing his shoulder made his skin crawl.

He kept wanting to look behind him.

The wind shifted from his back, swirling into the building, and the stench hit him less than two seconds before something with bones sticking out at horrible angles came up from around the table in the corner with a moan; he didn't think, he just backpedaled and fired, training kicking in even in the sudden terror, blowing its head off.

His shoulder hit the doorframe, and he came around hard to look behind him.

Nothing but white and his own boot tracks, the glare searing his eyes.

Three minutes later found Turnbull slamming the heels of his palms into the steering wheel of his cruiser with a choked, "Dammit," before he dissolved into angry sobs.

Eight minutes later found him getting back out of the cruiser, shaking like a leaf, ready to try again.

Fifteen minutes later, he had fired up the generator and the radio.

Sixteen minutes later, a plane bound for Uranium City's airport answered.


	101. ...need...

She watched him twist, teeth bared, the lines of his beautiful neck stretched taut and straining. He always was beautiful, but gone now were the softer, younger lines she had known for far too short a time; he was squared-off, powerfully built, and he jerked and writhed in a way that sent phantom heat through her.

He couldn't hear her in this state, but he was a feast for the eyes.

She loved his pain and wanted to end it; loved his life and wanted it over; loved his beauty and wanted to own it.

She loved him. Hated him. _Needed_ him.

It was her last thought as she had died; it was her only thought now.

He thought she was a dream. She knew the truth.

The two men and the woman here were unimportant. The men hovered around him, pleading or praying or just sitting in tortured silence and shock. They tried to save him, but he was hers and they just didn't matter. She had him long before they had come into his life.

Which just left one problem.

 _"Dad..."_

Ben's voice cut through the air, soft and strangled and tear-filled, his back arching, and then he tried to turn on his side and curl around himself. Those idiots had taken the cuffs off of him; he was still bound, but now it was with cloth-wrapped rope, and he had more range of motion. Considerate. Unfortunate. The cuffs were more brutal, more painful, and therefore he heard her better when she asked him to come with her.

"Ben," she said, getting close. He still didn't hear her, though. "Ben," she tried again, reaching out to touch him. "He's not here. He left you."

She had no indicator that Ben heard or felt her; he was dragging in desperate breaths, his teeth clacking together sporadically. She didn't get out of the way when the blond one came over, face twisted in empathy, trying to soothe Ben again while avoiding those teeth, petting his leg. Ignored his words; they couldn't do a damn thing for this man, but _she could_.

She just had to get her biggest problem out of the way, first. She was working on that. It was difficult. But she was working on it.

Victoria stayed close, spoke softly, a constant litany on the chance that it would make it through, wanting to moan for the way he _moved_ on that little bunk. "He's not here, Ben. He's not here, but I am. I can help you end this, I can help it stop hurting...

"...all you have to do is come with me."


	102. ...honesty...

Ian MacDonald had seen the light.

Okay, so maybe not really the light, but one thing he did do was learn the value of honesty. Okay, so maybe not the value of honesty, but he was so damn glad to be alive, that he didn't think it was a good idea to go breaking any promises to the Almighty, since he was absolutely sure his survival was a _miracle_.

Okay, so maybe that wasn't such a good idea.

"That's right, I was bitten!"

It was the truth; four days ago, Ian MacDonald sustained a bite by a zombie in the calf. Now, he couldn't wait to tell people about his miraculous recovery. "Tore a piece right out of my leg," he said, gesturing and smiling and not quite getting how badly he was freaking out the ragged, exhausted, paranoid group of survivors he'd come across. "But you don't have to worry, because--"

He turned and his pupils reflected back silvery in the light of a weak flashlight. "--it didn't kill me, I didn't turn into a zombie, I got better!"

He was so busy telling them the truth about his miraculous recovery from the zombie-virus that he didn't see the hunting rifle. Not even when it was too late.


	103. ...creak...

The kid was finally out again.

It was amazing what you could learn about one kid's life when he was delirious and talking to people who weren't there. There was somebody named Big J that Dewey would kick the shit out of if he wasn't probably a zombie by now, and Dewey figured out he would carve out his own heart if it would give the poor kid his mom. Or his sister.

Willie was sweating all over, his head lolling at Dewey's shoulder. Dewey ached. He was starting to feel kinda woozy and it seemed like the kid was only getting heavier. It was time to suck it up, and he knew it.

There was no way he was gonna clear any of these buildings with anything like stealth, so as Dewey walked up on the intersection that seemed for all the world like it was the beginning and end of this town, he picked a house at random. A house, because there was no way he was fucking with the silos and industrial buildings down the other way, and because it could have been that pretty little church on the other side of the road. Could have been, if Dewey hadn't seen a zombie movie or ten in his time and just _knew_ that was the kind of creepy that was asking for trouble.

Dewey hadn't made his peace with God or whatever was up there yet, and he had exactly zero desire to be the ironic agnostic eaten alive in a church. Uh-uh. Fuck that.

The house was gray, two stories with a basement. A whole lot of rooms to clear, in other words. But it was close. Close, tall enough to mean the upstairs windows had a reasonable vantage point, with a closed-in porch that meant Dewey could clear it and risk setting the kid down to check the rest. It wasn't ideal. Not at all. But there was only so much difference a promise to take care of the kid could make to the fact that they would both be dead soon anyway, and if they were going to kick the bucket, they might as well spend their last hours in a nice house instead of dragging ass across a ghost town to find a more secure one.

The porch door seemed like a beacon in the relative silence of the morning, creaking like that.

Dewey stood halfway in it, letting his eyes adjust to the somewhat lower light, allowed in by the blinds.

Wood floorboards. Fucking fantastic. Every step would creak. It was just a foyer, small, nothing special. Had a hat rack in the corner, no joke, and an umbrella stand in the other. The door between it and the rest of the house was decorative glass, and the room beyond was _awfully_ fucking dark.

Nice house. No sign it had been boarded up before it was vacated.

Dewey set Willie's little body under the hat and coat rack like he was laying him under a tree, sheltered by leaves made out of a lady's overcoat and some guy's trench, with a Miami Dolphins baseball cap on the top. Weird. He hoped the owners were in Florida and not just one of those weirdos that supported a random team just to be the oddball on the block.

He sighed to himself, covering the kid with his jacket, before picking up the only thing remotely like a weapon available to him; a fucking _umbrella_.

Dewey wielded it like a sword or something when he creaked open that damn glass door, stepping into the dark of the house proper.


	104. ...pills...

Fucking floorboards.

The place seemed designed to creak. Floorboards, furniture, doors. Hadn't these people ever heard of WD-40? For that matter, rugs?

Every footstep seemed to echo, especially on the stairs. Dustmotes drifted through beams of early morning sunlight that really should have lit the place up better than this. Dewey felt awfully stupid with nothing but an umbrella and a small utility flashlight for weaponry, and every blind he closed felt like he was sending up a flare for every zombie in the state.

It was a nice house. Didn't seem like the owners had hightailed it. Nothing was out of order, except that dust, and room by room, Dewey started to hope that it was really just them in it. It had a couple of bathrooms, and he rifled through medicine cabinets, finding mostly some lady's tampons and makeup and crap, antacids and vitamins, but coming out with a little bit of kid's chewable tylenol to stuff in his pockets. There was a loft, but it was small, just junk and more dust up there, open beams and a naked lightbulb dangling from the ceiling. the kinda place he'd have loved to play as a kid and have sex as a teenager. Smelled like cedar and must. Maybe he'd come up here, when it was his turn.

It was a nice house, and the door to the basement felt like distilled _bad idea_ from every horror movie ever. The steps creaked. Every last one. He thought it was a morbid kind of funny that he could still be scared of being lunch to basement zombies when he was ticking down the hours 'til he was one.

The reality was far more boring than the movies. Cinder block interior, cold asphalt floor, random storage boxes everywhere. Dewey would've grinned if he wasn't about to die. Abandoning the umbrella, he scored a big pair of garden shears and slid them uncomfortably through his belt. Rusty in places, but zombies didn't need to worry about lockjaw.

It was a nice house. Worse places to die.

The creak didn't bother him so much on the way back up, and he picked out a nice little kid's room for Willie. Picked him up again out of the foyer, gentle-like, just like he knew Elaine would want Willie held, and placed him under a comforter with Power Rangers on it. He didn't know what to do for the kid. Not really. Dewey wasn't so good with kids, most of the time, and how to help a sick one was beyond him.

A little voice told him the best way to help this sick kid was with those shears, but he couldn't make himself listen.

Instead, he picked out a big, fierce-looking dinosaur from the pile of toys and he put it on the bed by the kid. He set the shears on the nightstand, settled on the edge and pulled out the tylenol and looked at it.

He was woozy. Weak-feeling, achy. Getting warm.

The kid was pretty far gone, that fever burning him out. Was there any point to trying to bring Willie's fever down? Dewey still had time. Still had time. He stared at the cherry flavor tylenol. Stared at it.

Then, he put his hand to the boy's shoulder to nudge him awake.

No response.

Fuck. He'd have to do it the hard way.

Every instinct screamed even now at him to stay away from the kid's mouth, but he cracked open that tylenol bottle and spilled out onto his hand the last three pills left.

He put three tender fingertips to the boy's chin, nudging his mouth open, and raised the other hand to tip the pills into his mouth.


	105. ...portents...

"Why can't you make yourself useful and tell me where to find a pilot and a plane?" Buck asked, as he drove down 955 and kept his eyes on the snow-covered highway. Even with good snow-tires on the truck, he was taking his time. He kept telling himself that things were well in hand.

But every kilometer closer to civilization felt more and more like a walk out to a firing squad.

"Do I look like an air traffic controller?" Bob was sitting in the passenger's seat, yet again reminding Buck that he was going insane. Or perhaps trying to drive him there. "Unfortunately, I can only speak to you and Ben. And both of you have apparently lost your marbles, if you think that it's stranger seeing me than the rise of the undead. Maybe it's you who's gone senile, instead of me."

Bob was in rare form again. Buck just rolled his eyes.

"Well, don't make any attempt at conversation. How did I survive with only you as company when we were out there? You're supposed to be the one that never shuts up."

"If you haven't noticed, Bob," Buck said, lifting a hand off of the steering wheel to gesture, "I'm driving into a potential horde of undead in an attempt to locate an airplane to rescue _your son_ from a very large lake where he may have drifted anywhere. Now is not the time for idle conversation. Be grateful for my supposed senility, and tell me something useful."

"I've told Ben that I've contacted you. I don't know that he believes me." Bob looked out the window, into the forests, pensive again. "It was a terrible situation down there. I don't know why anyone would want to live in such miserable place. All of those people packed together. It was a disaster waiting to happen."

"It's probably less miserable when there aren't zombies."

"Hm," Bob said, apparently disagreeing.

Buck might have replied, if not for the fact that he had to downshift to a stop.

...there were snowshoe hares crossing the road. Dozens of them, the whites of their eyes showing, darting across the road and into the trees on the other side.

"Oh, that's bad," Bob said.

Buck looked in the direction they were coming from. Nothing but trees. But those hares wouldn't be on the move like that, in that number, without something much worse than a lynx chasing them.

He threw the truck into reverse, looking back over his shoulder, and started back the way he came as quickly as he could, immediately trying to guess where the last place was that he could turn around.

Things were not as well in hand as he'd thought they were.


	106. ...maggie...

_"It was my husband's,"_ she had said, and even though her voice was firm and certain, there was something raw underneath it. Clear even over the tinny radio. _"It's a bus, compared to the one we had before it."_

It was from Constable Maggie Mackenzie that Constable Renfield Turnbull found out that Yellowknife was under siege; she had heard it from some other pilot, flying for Quebec. Too many frightened people flying north, to perceived safety, from the lower provinces. Too many people who were already sick. Then again, if the undead could reach a uranium mine in the middle-of-nowhere Saskatchewan, it was silly to believe that they couldn't reach a place as big as Yellowknife.

She and her husband had been flying back to Lac La Martre a few days ago. She didn't tell Turnbull what had happened, but the fact that she was flying alone now and still hadn't made it home spoke well enough. They exchanged as much information as they could, as quickly as they could, until there was nothing more to say; she was running out of fuel, and the world was running out of time. Finally, Turnbull made his plea again.

 _"I have to report back to my detachment,"_ Mackenzie had said, and her voice lost a little of its cool tone. _"I'm sorry."_

"If you can... can manage it, if you contact anyone else..."

It felt cruel to have contacted another officer, another _living, breathing human_ , only to have duty quoted back at him. Ironic, Turnbull supposed.

 _"I'll do what I can, Constable."_

"I'll wait here until nightfall." Lord, but the thought of driving back on a dark, snowy road in a place where there might be zombies in the trees had spooked him. But not near as much as sitting in this building and waiting did, in the hopes she would be able to contact someone else; this was an active, open mine, and somewhere around here were the people who had worked here. That residential building sat on his mind far more heavily, at the moment, than a concussion did.

That had been well over two hours ago. The zombie that had been in here was outside now, laying in the snow, and it was the only one he had encountered. Turnbull was freezing, and he was jumpy. He had too much time to think, and every time the wind kicked up, he wanted to lock himself back in his cruiser and go. He didn't even know _where_. Anywhere. Anywhere safe.

If there was anywhere safe left.

The only thing he didn't let himself think about was home. Either home. If he didn't think about it, he could pretend it was intact. If he didn't think about it, Nipawin would be there. Leaside would be there. If he didn't think about it, he could keep his claws dug into this cold, half-numb daze long enough to at least be useful here.

The wind stirred, and he shivered.

The wind stirred, and...

...there was the sound of an engine, distant but audible in all of the silence.

 _"Are you still there, Turnbull?"_

"Yes, ma'am."

 _"Just call me Maggie."_ She sounded... wrong. Tired. _"I've run into trouble."_

 _Not her, too,_ he thought, closing his eyes tight. But he made himself ask anyway: "Were you bitten?"

A long pause, and the sound of the engine became louder.

 _"No. Shot,"_ was the grim reply.


	107. ...hitch...

The clicking had stopped, and left behind nothing but pain.

Kowalski was starting to wonder if maybe he'd end up being the one to shoot Fraser after all.

Vecchio was in a bad way, too; had been since he'd shattered, still in Kowalski's arms, on deck after Frannie hadn't been able to do it. Kowalski tried to hold him, but Vecchio just curled in on himself on deck, wrapped his arms over his head like he was trying to protect himself from being hit, and cried. And Kowalski had gotten... not numb to Frannie's tears, just used to them, and he'd long since gotten used to his own, bleeding, never-ending grief, but Vecchio...

God, if he never heard a sound like that again, it would be too soon.

Then again, never was starting to look more and more like it was going to be an answer.

He petted on Fraser's leg. Frase was too wracked out from pain to even move anymore; he just laid there, drawing every breath like it was gonna be the last, blue eyes unfocused. Ray didn't even know if he felt it, but he did it anyway. Sometimes he'd try to say something, just to talk, but it never seemed to make it through.

If this wasn't hell, it was close to it.

"This wasn't how it was supposed to be," Kowalski said, and his own voice sounded distant to his ears. "Y'know, this meeting thing. We were supposed to meet some other way, I bet. You, me and Vecchio. Even Frannie. Some good way."

Fraser kept breathing.

"And I'll bet we woulda gotten along like a house on fire, you and me and him. Three musketeers. She could be the queen of Spain or something. And we would have been awesome."

Vecchio came in, then. Ray couldn't make himself look at his eyes and see the hurt. He just couldn't.

"But I'm not ready to give up. You hear me? I'm not ready to give up, and you shouldn't give up, either. We can still do this. Get through this. Right?"

He heard Vecchio's breath hitch in all of the silence. Kowalski wished that wasn't an answer.


	108. ...mine...

This was not where he was supposed to be.

Bob Fraser looked around at the no-place he'd apparently shifted through, perplexed that a light seemed to appear from nowhere above him. It had no source. It simply was, and the realm beyond seemed to be infinite black.

"I think there's been a mistake," he called out to no one.

The echo was taken by the black.

Bob frowned, scanning the nothing without turning his head.

Somewhere, nowhere, there was static. It spiked in volume, twisted and distorted, and how it was one could distort _static_ was beyond him. A sort of metal sound, flat and then sharp, sounded from another direction, and to each, Bob spun and stepped toward the source. Which was, of course, nothing.

The notes graduated downward in pitch, until the static seemed to steady itself.

"I've had enough of this!" He said to no one, into nothing, and pressed his will to demanifest as he had many times before, flitting between Benton and Buck.

He dissolved, merely to reappear a second later.

The static notes graduated higher again, spiraling off into plain white noise.

Useless or not, Bob pulled his sidearm, firing off into nothing. The bullet fired out across the black, the echo absorbed by nothing.

White noise twisted and his ears ached on the feedback loop, sharp and too lengthy, before it settled. Now it was coming from everywhere.

 _"He's..."_

Great _Scott_ , something was speaking. Rasped, far away, tinny and _ghastly_ , but it was unmistakably speech.

"Whatever you want, you'll not get it from me! So I'll thank you to go back to Hell or wherever you came from and take your zombies with you!"

Laughter. Tinny, hideous, rasping laughter and that voice again, twisted of static. _"He's..."_

It seemed to fade out, like interference on the line, and when it faded back it was crystal clear.

"... _ **mine**_."

Bob took one very large step back, and when he did, the world spun above his head until everything was white snow and blue sky.


	109. ...pragmatism...

"Is he back?" Buck asked, barely taking time to kick the snow off of his boots once he was inside the door, hanging the lanyard with the keys up on the hook beside the door. "Turnbull, is he back?"

"Not yet," Julie said, frowning. Apparently, whatever she saw in her father's eyes made her nervous. "Dad... what happened?"

"I found where everyone in Descharme Lake had vanished to, and then some," Buck answered, leaning back against his front door. Mercifully, they were slow-moving from the cold, even though the day had warmed to above freezing. He'd left them behind, driving a lot faster than he actually felt safe doing so, but he didn't want to contemplate the notion that they might have enough intelligence left in their rotting brains to follow the tracks in the snow.

"Oh, God." Julie came over, wrapping her arms around him. "No, no word of him. I've been listening to the scanner, but either he's still out of range or..."

No one wanted to contemplate what the 'or' was. Buck hugged Julie back, then took a few cleansing breaths. "I'll run the generator here, recharge the scanner's battery. If he doesn't get back soon, I'll go looking." After all, he had sent the kid up there. He didn't even really expect Turnbull would find a plane up there, the whole exercise was just to give him something to keep his focus on, but damned if Buck didn't plan on getting that kid back alive whether he found a plane or not.

"Dad..." Julie looked at him, eyebrows drawn up in worry. "We're running out of gasoline."

It was a practical, pragmatic assessment. Something he'd expect from a woman raised in the north, even if she had moved to the city eventually. Sensible. Unlike Bob, who seemed to think that being dead granted him the right to ask for the impossible.

"Gather everyone up. Gather up all of the supplies," he said, and he knew that one way or another, they likely wouldn't be here tomorrow night.

Considering what Buck had seen to the south, there was a lot more riding on that plane than Benton Fraser. They were running out of room. Running out of time.

It might be the only thing that could save any of them now.


	110. ...release...

Her first look at the voice on the other end of the radio was after a rocky landing, left leg throbbing in a steady scream at her calf, and it was probably the most absurdly normal thought she had ever had:

 _He's taller than I thought he'd be._

"Constable Maggie Mackenzie, at your service," she said, as she carefully climbed down out of the cockpit and tried to ignore the fact that her own blood was dripping on the snow. She tried to smile for it, but she wasn't even sure why.

Turnbull stared at her for a moment, then blinked once and stepped over, hesitantly, gesturing to her leg. "You're still bleeding," he said, and held up a battered looking first aid kit with his other hand.

Maggie looked down, then nodded. "That I am. Would you mind...?"

"No, ma'am, not at all." It was very polite, and he knelt down, quickly getting into the first aid kit. He was pale, battered, bandaged, but not the sickly pale of the dying or undead.

"Maggie," she said again, watching, unable to parse the idea that she was being ma'am'd by a man the same rank and apparent age as her. And when the scarf came off and the pressure dressing was put on, she hissed, though otherwise she kept talking through clenched teeth. "Maggie is fine."

"Maggie," Turnbull echoed, and she could hear the sympathetic wincing in his voice, as he tightened down the dressing. "You may-- that is, if you like--" A pause, then a quiet sigh. "My name is Renfield."

It took a moment as the dressing was finally in place, then Maggie tested her weight on the leg. It threatened to buckle, and her calf burned in a way that made her stomach churn, but it would hold for... for however damn long it had to. If she had anything to say about it.

She didn't even know why she asked. After Casey... after days of trying to find one airport where she could land and take on enough fuel to reach the Territories, only to barely be able to steal enough to get by for another hundred kilometers without getting into the reserve... after landing on some remote airstrip to snatch a couple of hours of sleep... after being shot by panicked people after her plane at Uranium City... after all of that, her first real, nonviolent contact with another living person, and she asked, "Wasn't he the one who ate bugs?"

Renfield winced as he stood in a manner that suggested that he had heard that far too many times in his life already, though it seemed more like a reflex than genuine. "So I've been told, yes."

Maggie nodded and offered an apologetic little smile. Poor man. It was a good name, if not for the association; she could imagine what it must have been like growing up with it, though, and then she realized just how little that actually mattered now.

Exhaustion coiled with grief, and the sheer absurdity of this clawed at her heart.

And then she started laughing.

And then she started crying.

She couldn't even quite understand why she was doing either; there was nothing particularly funny, and there was very little point to tears now. But there was no shutting it off. She tried; tried to get herself back under control, tried to present her stoicism to a world where it didn't matter anymore, tried to do something, anything, to ease the raking pain in her chest and the sickly amusing surreality of this discussion. But she failed.

She got to work with half-frozen tears running down her face.

By the time they had finished securing the plane and were helping each other back to the beaten, dirty cruiser sitting in the snow beside the building, they were both a mess, too hurt to fight and too alive to quit.


	111. ...wake...

Dewey was sweating, bleeding, running on no sleep and starting to lose his mind.

It was secondary. The odd twitch didn't interfere with the job at hand, and he wasn't gonna let it. As last acts upon the Earth go, this one was as honorable as Dewey ever thought he could do, and he was damn well going to do it right.

Didn't help that both hands hurt to use, now, even though the first bite had been numb since the night before. The other hand was the proud owner of the dental impression from Willie, starting to tingle now, still bleeding. Must've been some kind of reflex. Even passed deeply out, as soon as flesh had touched the kid's mouth to dump those tylenol in, his teeth had clamped down hard.

And refused to let go.

Dewey had screamed, struggled, gasped, pleaded. Willie had bitten him so hard and long that Dewey had considered just writing the flesh off and yanking his hand out no matter what it tore away. He couldn't make himself hit the kid. Couldn't make himself kill him, either.

In the end, he didn't have to. Teeth locked down, the kid had let out one last whimper before his breath turned to a rattle and the rattle turned to silence. Teeth slid out of Dewey's muscle and skin.

Just like that, Willie had died.

Dewey didn't know how long he'd sat outside that bedroom door, shears in hand, listening for the first signs of reanimation. Hours. Aching, shivering, sweating, paranoid hours with nothing to do but make half-hearted attempts to stem the bleeding at the edge of his hand with his balled-up shirt edge. The sounds never came.

Small mercies.

Wrapped in a Power Rangers blanket, stuffed dinosaur tucked at his chest, Dewey hefted the little boy's body and walked him out into the light.

On unsteady legs, Dewey was crossing the street. A breeze passed through the trees. Whispering. The church across the road was pretty. A Lutheran job with a bell tower and high pointed windows. An American flag drifted on the wind atop a pole that overlooked the parking lot. There were no cars left in it. Dewey walked over cracked yellow lines, passing under the shade of more trees and through to the grass behind the church. There was a small basketball court beside the patch of grass. A little soccer goal, too. Wasn't a bad place for a kid. Not at all.

He laid Willie gently under one of the trees. Sunlight peeked through the branches now and then, when the wind picked up a bit. He covered him over, smoothing the blanket down, and laid the dinosaur beside him.

Dewey sat down in the grass to wait a little while in the breeze.


	112. ...civilized...

The mirror didn't show her a zombie. She wasn't rotting. She looked pale and tired, and her eyes... didn't look quite _right_ , but she wasn't... she wasn't...

Audrey had stumbled into the house. When she opened the door, the owner had shambled out. He didn't look at her for more than a moment before he had gone past.

Somehow, that terrified her more than the fact he existed at all.

Now, she tried to scrub herself with water from the bathtub, conveniently filled up. Presumably for drinking water. She drank all she could, and then she stripped and washed her body, shivering in the cool house and unable to stop her tears. She wasn't even sure why she was crying.

She still had a pulse. Her skin still turned pink where she scrubbed dirt off. She felt pain, though it felt distant, muffled. The coppery, moldy taste hadn't come back, but she could still smell... everything. Shampoo, soap, shaving cream, even the cleaning chemicals under the sink that were unopened.

Her stomach twisted sharply; she breathed as deep as she could to keep from retching.

Their base had been infiltrated days and days ago by an unidentified woman. The outbreak happened not long later. The base had gone into high alert. Audrey wasn't privy to that information, she wasn't a part of that division on base, but she just _knew_ and oh, _God_...

Her breath hitched, and she got back to cleaning her battered, naked, tired body.

The simple, civilized act of washing her hair without knowing if she was human or not made her sob.


	113. ...removed...

It had been a funeral procession, leaving Willie behind.

Elaine Besbriss hadn't cried since.

Someone had steered her into the back seat beside Trish. Stewart drove. Blue took Dewey's place in the passenger seat and tried to read the crumpled map they had. The two would whisper now and then about routes. How to avoid population centers. What back roads could be suicide. How much gas they had. All of it hushed. Like speaking would disturb the dead.

Elaine's clothes were covered in blood. Willie's hat was stuffed in her pants pocket, that smudged with blood, too.

Her arms felt numb. Her shoulders heavy. There was a hole in her and she didn't understand why it wasn't bleeding.

Trish's head lay on Elaine's shoulder; distantly she knew their fingers were laced together. Trish's tears mingled with Willie's blood, when they fell far enough. Elaine didn't really see anything that passed. Her gaze fixed somewhere out the front windshield.

"You should sleep," Stewart said, somewhere along the line. Trish jumped. Elaine didn't flinch.

She focused her look on him in the rearview for a long moment. He gave her a soft expression; grief, sympathy. Hers was blank.

He looked away.

Trish curled in on herself, balling up her jacket and moving to lay her head in Elaine's lap.

A pothole jostled the car.

Elaine felt nothing.


	114. ...found...

Between Bob Fraser and the undead, Buck had very little patience left in him for _businessmen_. Which was bad, because the two they had in their otherwise solid group were the loudest, and the most obnoxious. Panicky, used to being in charge, they'd been trying to feel their way around for where they could take control of the situation and took this discussion as the prime opportunity.

Jim Black had casually made a comment about kicking them out and that shut them up damn fast. One of the Dene, Buck hadn't known him before La Loche and still didn't know him personally, but the man was solid and dependable, if aloof.

Not that Buck could blame him for the aloof part. While La Loche had been a terror for him, it was no doubt far worse for a man who'd lived there his entire life.

"There can't be that many of them," Paul, one of the businessmen said, quietly, with those ridiculous flat-hand gestures they'd probably picked up in some fancy college somewhere. "Why can't we just plow through them?"

"Were you paying attention on the ride up here?" Marilyn asked, arms crossed.

955 was called the road to nowhere by some, and it was about as well-maintained as one would expect it to be. Trucks from the mine battered it, weather eroded it, and the idea of trying to plow through anything on it was damn amusing.

Not that Buck was unwilling to try, but not with his daughter and granddaughter in the truck.

Unfortunately, that didn't leave all that many places for them to go. There were some scattered cottages north, or camping settlements, but would they be facing the same situation again when the undead spread out?

Vaguely, he heard the squawk from the scanner in the kitchen, and he headed in there to pick it up, listening through the hiss of static to the broken, repeating transmission.

When he came back, ten minutes later to the increasingly grim argument in the livingroom, he was dazed.

"He did it. Found a plane. Found a pilot, too."

The entire group of eleven stared.


	115. ...dogged...

The crawl back from Cluff Lake was long, quiet and a little awkward.

Maggie had sat in silence with her hands knotted on her lap. Turnbull had gripped his steering wheel as though he might lose the cruiser at any given moment, and was doing his best to forget that he might be asked to abandon it. He was having far more trouble with that notion, cut across his dazed and aching head, than he was prepared for. And a great deal of layered guilt on top of it that he would fear losing his _car_ of all things. That of all of the horrors and losses, it was the notion of losing his cruiser that he couldn't seem to get out of his mind.

Both it, and him, belonged in Nipawin.

After the relief wore off, reality came back with that residential building at the mine; he didn't have to tell Maggie what was in there, and she didn't ask. The door was still closed. Neither of them quit checking over their shoulders until it was nearly an hour behind them. The horror of realizing what it would be like to have an infection spread through an underground mine, the horror that realizing that the living may be just as dangerous -- both filled the silence more loudly than any words.

She had drifted to sleep for a time after that, her stiff posture fading to an exhausted slump against the passenger's side window, and Turnbull tried to keep the drive as smooth as possible so as not to wake her; the road was horrible, and snow made the ruts harder to see, but he figured that she likely was badly exhausted and needed as much rest as she could get.

Even as gently as he tried to drive, though, eventually there was a pair of startlingly blue eyes looking at him, under a pair of drawn eyebrows. "How bad?" she asked, upnodding at his head.

"I'm not entirely certain," he replied, flicking an uneasy glance back, until she looked back ahead. "Your leg?"

"In and out. .22 rifle," she said, clipped and precise. "There were six of them in a truck. I thought they might be helpful, but..."

"Panicked?"

"Yes." Maggie nodded, then her mouth twitched. She seemed to wrestle with herself, then finally said, "I would have helped them. I tried to explain. They didn't listen."

There wasn't really much more that could be said, than that.

"Lac La Martre?" he asked, finally, after the silence had gone on for too long.

Maggie nodded, slowly. "My first detachment. Northwest of Great Slave Lake. You?"

"Nipawin. Four and a half hours north of Regina." He rubbed his thumb against the steering wheel, frustrated all over again with the ache at the base of his throat. Not now. Now wasn't the time. He wasn't sure if there ever _would_ be a time. "If... if Uranium City is still intact, then... then it bodes well, for the towns and settlements further north," he added, sheer dogged determination to talk, rather than shatter. At least one was _useful_.

"I hope so," she said, carefully neutral. She fished into the pocket of her coat, and pulled out a sealed bag, offering it over with her eyebrows drawn up, her expression apparently speaking what her voice didn't, whether she meant it to or not. "Pemmican?"

They didn't say anything else, just shared food and shared water, until it was time to pull the mic off its bracket and call one-sided down the radio to Frobisher.


	116. ...level...

There was some chaos, when the cruiser returned to the cabin.

 _Maggie Stern?!_ was the first thought Buck had, when she got out of the cruiser and stood on one leg. Apparently, she recognized him as well; her eyes widened, then narrowed, and her mouth fell open as though she couldn't believe it.

Buck had known Ellen Stern, had remembered Maggie from when she was a little thing, not even tall as his hip. She wasn't so little now. No, she was a striking young woman -- very young woman -- even battered, and he probably would have looked twice even if he hadn't recognized her.

There was no mistaking those eyes, though.

"I didn't..." she said, then trailed off.

"What happened?" Marilyn asked, pointing to Maggie's leg. She'd already given Turnbull a long look, from where he stood gripping the top edge of his cruiser's door like a lifeline, and had shot Buck another short-tempered glare for the fact that the kid looked as rough as he did, but priorities being priorities...

"A .22 round, ma'am," Maggie replied, with an apologetic, somewhat self-depricating smile. Her voice was steady; that didn't surprise Buck in the least. Ellen had been quite the stoic as well, though once she warmed up, she was downright wonderful company.

Marilyn nodded back, face set in a worried frown, and headed over to offer her an arm. "Let's get a look at it."

"Maggie Stern," Buck finally said, trying to shake off the disbelief that came with seeing someone you never expected to, far outside of where you expected them; it was only marginally less surprising than seeing Bob...

...who apparently decided to show up right then. "Good God, she looks like her mother," Bob breathed, gaping.

Maggie nodded while Buck did the best he could to ignore Bob, who walked towards her, peering at her face. A shadow of something crossed her expression, even as she took Marilyn's arm, hobbling along the path to the door carefully. "Mackenzie; I was married a few months ago."

Buck looked at the cruiser for a moment. No one else was there.

He waited until Maggie was lead inside by Marilyn (Bob tailing behind like some sort of stunned dog) then looked across the blue-and-white to Turnbull, who was starting to look more and more like he was ready to bolt, still clinging to his door and occasionally looking southeast, a half-wild, heartsick desperation creeping into his expression where the shock he'd been in since Buck found him was giving way.

 _Where would you go?_ Buck thought, sadly. Wasn't hard to figure out where that look was aimed, or why. _It's not there anymore._

"Come on, Constable. We need every level head we've got in there to offset those pissants in suits," he said, a tone of a man used to commanding men, and headed inside himself.

He didn't dare let on that he was relieved when he was followed.


	117. ...black...

Of all the pilots on the planet, the boy Mountie found Maggie Stern.

It had to be a sign of something, but Bob didn't know what. The afterlife was a Hell of a time to start wondering if the dead really did watch the living. Maybe Caroline had good reason for giving him the silent treatment in the hereafter.

When Bob finally broke through, he felt like he was looking at his son through bevelled glass. He didn't know what to think anymore. His transfer felt like moving through molasses in winter, and he felt himself waver and distort before he could finally manifest at Benton's bedside.

"Benton--"

Bob stopped.

His son was still sick, still in pain, he could feel it, but that wasn't what made the hairs on the back of his ghostly neck stand up.

No. It was the absolute, soul-shuddering certainty that he was being _watched_ that did that.

He flicked a look around; there was nothing here. Nothing...

Nothing. The room was empty, even now of his son; no Yanks. No Benton. Just the furniture and himself.

"--what is this?"

Benton's form flickered on the bed and disappeared again.

Bob's gun was out again, pointed at nothing.

"What in God's name is going on?"

Another flicker caught his eye and he swung his aim to a corner on the ceiling. Blackness. Static. Blackness. Static.

The black phased and pressed itself clearly on reality for an instant. The bloodied, rotting face of a woman leered back at him, glazed eyes in unnatural focus.

She cranked her neck, tilting her head at him. Black curls spilled down her shoulders to meld into black clothes, all of which hung from the ceiling where she'd plastered herself, arms and legs out.

Black muck poured from her mouth as it opened, hitting the floor with a disgusting _slop_ , and impossibly, the apparition... _laughed_.

Bob could barely find the breath to swear, and when he fired at it, she snapped out of existence.

His skin crawled. He was still panting when his son's form flickered back in on the bunk.


	118. ...progression...

"It came from the base at Rosewell."

Audrey McKenna was talking for her life.

She hadn't quite believed it was real, when a procession of cars had come through, and the fact that they were clearly civilians was a stroke of luck. The five or six zombies lingering in the street had fallen under their tires, with the exception of a child-infected that the man in a police uniform had given a single bullet through the head.

They'd nearly given it to Audrey from the startle when she'd scrambled out of the bushes toward them.

No time to check her over for bites, they'd put her in the back of an SUV - the floor was covered in somebody's blood - and ridden far enough to clear any leftover infected before she was put out again and questioned.

There was no way to hide the bite. Audrey didn't know how else to explain, except to start from the beginning and hope they didn't shoot her out of spite. She'd chosen to confide in the cop. _Please hear me out. Don't kill me. I was bitten, but I **recovered**._

She stood in a small gathering. The cop. A dark-haired woman covered in blood. A tall, skinny man with brown hair (the only one to introduce himself yet; Harry Reems), and what looked to be a man in a dress stood around Audrey, apparently prepared to hear her out. The fact that she was military had been met with raised eyebrows from everyone but the bloodied woman, who just looked blank. That look scared the Hell out of her.

"We didn't-- we didn't know about this. It wasn't my division, I didn't have anything to do with it. A few days before everything went to Hell there was a breach in security. We were heavily locked down, rumors were flying, there were theories about UFO-nutjobs and anarchists but we never officially found out what happened.

"We were given orders not to talk about it even amongst ourselves, but we did anyway. The higher-ups tried to look like they weren't terrified, but they weren't any good at it, which is a terrible sign when it's your everyday job. Reports of sickness were rising in the civilian population and we were confined to the base. One section of it was locked down totally and put under armed guard even from us. The section for certain kinds of experimental weaponry. Bio-warfare.

"It wasn't hard to put together after that. By the time it was spreading outside of Chicago, we were trapped. It wasn't just anomalous reports of some kind of obscure flu in the city anymore. It was in the smaller towns. Spreading. Some of the personnel wanted to get out. They wanted to find their families, bring them on-base, get them out of the country, or even just _warn_ them to get as far away as they could, but we were ordered to have no contact with the outside.

"It didn't last. I don't know how infection got in. We should have been quarantined. We should have been safe, but a few people started to get sick... At the first sign of infection, the victim was taken and we didn't see him again. Some of them got good at hiding it." She held up her arm to display the mostly-healed bite. "I was one of them.

"It wasn't long before infighting started. I couldn't hide when I started to show severe symptoms. I think I passed out. I was taken. They... I..." She shook her head. "I don't know why I lived when everyone else turned. They locked me away. _Documented the progression of the infection_." She muttered it bitterly; they had talked over her, like she was a lab rat. "I don't remember very much. I remember my fever breaking, because they wouldn't stop talking about it. I remember..." Needles. Cameras. Lights. Blood and injections. "...I knew one of the doctors. I don't know why he let me go. He didn't tell me. He smuggled me out in a pile of bodies for the incinerator, and I ran."

There was silence in the wake of Audrey's story that she thought was probably warranted for it. It didn't make it any less unnerving. The man called Harry shared a glance with the police officer.

"I don't know what they did to me. I don't even know how long it's been. But if they're bombing, it probably means that my superiors regained control long enough to order it."


	119. ...impatience...

They had a plane with limited fuel and limited space, a mine where there may or may not be undead, thirteen people, undead to the south and a choice between two unknowns. They had just enough fuel to make that choice in either direction, but not both.

Some of them wanted to take on the formerly living residents of Descharme Lake, like the two businessmen, who would probably expect the Mounties to handle it while they sat pretty in the back of the Blazer. Jake and Helen, two of the La Loche residents that had survived, were teetering on that line -- they didn't want to leave their home territory. Jim Black registered no opinion, but he was clearly thinking. Marilyn and Mack both wanted to take the plane, as did Buck and Julie. Len, who had been up here camping and fishing, wanted to go north. Maggie was certainly going north. Turnbull hadn't spoken, though he was clearly contemplating other options.

And then there was Bob, who wanted everything done _right now_.

"Well, what are you waiting for? An engraved invitation from the undead? 'We cordially invite you to an all-you-can-eat-buffet where you're standing. Casual dress, please baste yourselves in gravy in lieu of gifts. Signed, Blaaaaaaaaaaargh.' Every second you sit around with your fingers jammed where the sun doesn't shine is a second my son is bobbing on polluted waters wondering where to jam his while he waits!"

"If he has to listen to you, I'd suggest his ears," Buck muttered as he scratched his nose, trying to pass it off with a clear of his throat.

"He's not going to be listening to much of anything if you people loaf around any longer!"

"And right now, I'm damned sorry I'm listening to you," Buck whispered, and then he raised his eyebrows in a genuinely _'what?'_ expression when half of the group looked at him. Just what he needed. Everyone to think he was crazy.

Maggie was frowning; everyone else looked back to each other, debating anew what to do. But she was frowning and watching and Buck pretended to listen into the debate, until thankfully Turnbull distracted her, dropping his head and whispering aside to her. After a moment, she nodded back to him and whispered in turn.

"I should have known this was pointless. You weren't trying to catch my killer, how could I think you were going to save my son?" Bob griped.

"I'm going to take a leak," Buck announced to the group and did his damned best not to break a tooth from grinding his teeth together as he turned and headed out the back door of the cabin. Seething, frankly. And pissed because Bob could _still_ get him fired up, even from beyond the grave.

"Pissing away time while you're at it!"

Buck shut the door with a soft click, before turning on Bob. "I realize that you have your head tucked tightly in your ghostly ass, Bob, but I'll thank you to pull it out long enough to take a good, long look at the two kids sitting in there. They're on the edge of collapse. Take a look and tell me you want to put them through _yet another_ ringer _right this second_. Look at them, Bob. Look at all of them. Tell me any of these people can jump to your childish demands when they're battered, tired, and running on damn near empty."

"Now, see--"

Buck put up a hand. "I don't have time for this. Every second I'm standing here lecturing you like the sixteen-year-old you're being is a second I could be in there making progress. You're my partner. I'd trust you to pull me back from a chasm, to cover me in a firefight, to weather a storm locked in a cabin with my wife alone for a week, now you need to trust me. We're doing the best we can with what we've got. I'm saying this as a friend: shut the Hell up!"

Bob seethed, clearly ready to snarl right back at him, pointing in his face. No doubt ready to talk about how in their generation, they could go a week living on nothing to eat but frozen dirt with two broken legs and still get their man. Even though Buck's bum leg still reminded him otherwise.

And then Bob dropped his hand and looked away. "I don't know if he's going to make it. If any of them are, him or those Yanks. It's bad down there, Buck."

Buck felt a hard chill that had nothing to do with the cold air outside. "If he's still on the lake..."

"They're running out of time." Bob Fraser wasn't a man to often let his guard down, and that honestly frightened his old partner a lot more than he wanted to admit.

"Everyone's doing the best they can," Buck reaffirmed, shaking his head, trying to ignore the shiver in his spine. "We'll keep doing that."

"I hope it's enough," Bob said, jaw tight, eyes narrowed in pain. And then he vanished again.


	120. ...hello...

"...nobody's out there. I dunno what I'm doing. ... Hello? ... I'm being stupid. It's not like I can talk to anybody. There's nobody... nobody _left_. It's the static or the dog, and the dog's... the dog's sleeping. Please? Hello?"

 

"Please. Somebody."

 

 

 

"God, please. _\--please_ , there's got to be somebody out there."

 

 

 

 

 

 

"I dunno who I am anymore."

 

"I dunno if I can live through this."

 

 

 

 

 

"To Hell with this."

 

 

 _"--just heard a voice. Hello? Am I working this thing right? Somebody get Elaine, I swear I thought I heard somebody over the radio. Hello?"_

 

 

 **-End Day Four-**


	121. ...little...

Ellen Stern’s daughter was asleep on his couch, and Buck watched her for a long moment, her face illuminated by the low fire in the fireplace, and tried not to think about how he was going to likely have to manipulate her into doing what Bob wanted.  
  
She looked like the girl she was. Twenty-two? Twenty-three? It was easy, sometimes, to forget how young that actually was, especially when you’d left it long in the past. How little anyone knows at that age, about themselves or about the world, even when they thought otherwise.  
  
She looked too young, exhausted, and in her sleep, she looked afraid and sad in a way that Buck was sure would vanish the moment she was awake. Not because the fear wasn’t there. But because she would hide it.  
  
Buck wanted to save Ben. Badly.  
  
He wasn’t sure he was ready to put this girl in the line of fire to do it.  
  
He wanted to do it for Bob. But he wanted to do it for himself, too; it was too late, and he was too tired, to play bullshit with himself and pretend that he didn’t have his own motives. And those motives were the same damn ones that had him out there searching for a kid calling in the dark two days ago, clinging to his unit number and ten-codes like they mattered anymore.  
  
Buck was occasionally called a pit-bull. Once he had his teeth into something, he wouldn’t let go. Geiger was probably his most violent example, but there were plenty of others over the years.  
  
He wanted to do this for Bob. Ben didn’t deserve to be left out there like that.  
  
Maggie stirred, a nervous jolt, but Marilyn had passed her some kind of hefty painkiller for her leg and she settled again. Buck waited until she was, before pulling the blanket back up to cover her shoulder.  
  
He wanted to do this for himself, too. Snatch one more back from the jaws of death. Maybe even four more. Maybe if he did it enough, he could remember what it felt like to be a Mountie, instead of a desk jockey. Maybe he would be able to leave the guilt of not being by Bob’s side, by saving his son.  
  
Maybe, when he left the world, he would be leaving something good behind in it, amidst the broken wreckage of civilization; a good group of men and women who could be with Julie and Patty, after he was gone and couldn’t be there himself.  
  
He made sure the girl on his couch was warm and safe, for this little piece of time, and then went to go and check on them with his throat tight and his chest aching. 

 


	122. ...spots...

The loft smelled of cedar and must, and his mouth tasted of copper and mould.

There were big plush beds in this house with fluffy pillows and lots of covers but when Dewey had marched back to it, it was the loft he wanted. He'd grabbed one of those fluffy pillows and some of those covers and schlepped his aching body up the rickety stairs. There were windows in the loft. Small, not enough to fit through to jump out of, but enough to let light in if he ticked the blinds. 

The floor was naked beams and exposed insulation in some places, but by the window, there was a proper space. He tossed the bedding down on it, his shears hit the floor, and Dewey locked the door to the thing, hunkering down to spend his unlife in the tiny room. 

When he cut out the light, he sank to the covers and began clicking his flashlight on and off.

There was only so long before the clicking of the flashlight got annoying.

He clicked it off and stared at the spots on the ceiling as they faded. Blue. Yellow. Red. He tried to stare at them, but they bounced away when his eye tried to focus.

The shadows played tricks.

His hands hurt.

He'd read somewhere that when you took away a guy's senses... when you plugged his ears, put him in the dark, and tied him down... the guy's brain started to compensate or something. It was something about the human brain having to make up something in the absence of any kind of input. If you left him like that for hours, he'd start to hallucinate. He wondered if that was true.

His breath was loud in here. He could feel the heat rising off his own cheeks. The red spots faded after a while.

Without warning, Thomas Dewey's brain turned on him.


	123. ...vecchio...

The dawn came with Frannie on the radio.  
  
Ray Vecchio stopped listening sometime during the night. Heard Fraser occasionally make noise; a moan, or a whimper, or sometimes soft, half-conscious words. Heard Kowalski speak in a low, ever-present chatter that waxed and waned, often in tune with Fraser’s sounds. Heard a duet; a chorus he had no voice in.  
  
Now, it was dawn and Frannie was on the radio and Fraser was finally quiet again, too quiet, deathly quiet, face pale. Kowalski was quiet, too, eyes closed, face tight.  
  
Ray wrapped his knees tighter to his chest and rested his head sideways on them.  
  
“Vecchio.”  
  
He tried to ignore it.  
  
“Vecchio.”  
  
He didn’t know why the Hell Kowalski was trying to talk to him. Not after yesterday. Not after that. Not after the night where Ray was just… just…  
  
He heard Kowalski shift and tightened his jaw; heard Kowalski get up and tensed to swing or bolt or whatever he was gonna have to do, because after yesterday, and seeing his baby sister walk away with the gun Kowalski forced into her hand, to go and shoot a guy that hadn’t done anything  _wrong_ , hadn’t asked to be hurt, Ray wasn’t sure who Kowalski was anymore, except the guy who woulda made Frannie do that…  
  
…and Ray woulda done it himself, first, just to save his sister from being the one to, and oh, God. Oh, God.  
  
“Vecchio…” Softer now, too close, and Ray picked his head up to snarl Kowalski away, or ask why the fuck he thought he had the right to say anything, or… or…  
  
Kowalski reached out, hesitated when Ray flinched automatically, and then kept going anyway, hands to both sides of his face like Ray was some kinda kid who just bashed his knees up riding a bike, and Kowalski said, “Vecchio…  _Ray,_ ” all soft and tight and miserable, “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. That was a shit thing to do, and I’m sorry,” and Ray tried to pull his head back or make his arms move to shove Kowalski away or get up and move or scream or something and he couldn’t, he couldn’t, and Kowakski just kept saying, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” over and over again, tight and choked, until they were pressed forehead to forehead like they’d been back when they maybe once knew each other. 


	124. ...SEP...

They were still divided on what to do with Audrey McKenna.

It was a mindfuck, Stewart figured. A living victim. Not living dead. Just living. 

He felt for the woman. Nobody wanted to touch her, and he had to figure in a state like hers, anyone could use a little affection. The no-fly-zone around her was palpable. Reminded him of the AIDS panic, a little. Only AIDS never left anyone with eyes that reflected at night, like a dog or something.

Still. He could tell by looking at them all what they were thinking. The people they'd killed. The people they'd left behind. 

How many of them could've gotten over it?

How many people had they murdered instead of just putting them out of their misery?

Stewart didn't have hope, like that. The woman was from some kind of military base. Maybe they had vaccines for this kind of thing. He didn't know. But he wasn't going to dwell on something that was probably a freak occurrence. He'd seen too much death to have anything like hope.

Still. Something bothered him.

" _Tom_ ," Brandi had said in that horrified whisper that she got. 

"Willie," Elaine had answered, still kind of sickeningly blank.

No. Stewart didn't hold out hope like that. Except, apparently, he did.

This was another parting of ways.

It was Brandi that said it, but they'd all been thinking it. Stewart could see which of them would go with him before they ever opened their mouths.

They didn't have to tell Elaine. She'd only nodded. Stewart was tired of saying goodbye by now. They slipped away without much of a word. 

Their station wagon held some guns, some provisions, a map. A whole lot of blood in the back. Not enough gas for comfort. Held a cop, a prostitute, a burglar and a janitor.

Audrey McKenna would have to be someone else's problem.


	125. ...stirring...

“I don’t know how to read this thing,” Frannie said, and it was the truth. The navigation stuff on the boat was all way over her head, and Kowalski was spending all his time with Fraser, so she couldn’t ask him, and then there were these maps with funny lines and numbers on them. “I don’t know. But we can’t be too far away from each other if we can hear each other, right?”  
  
 _“Right,”_  the other voice answered, not too confidently. Her name was Trish. She was pregnant.  
  
She was pregnant, and the world had just ended.  
  
Frannie held onto her voice with all she had.  
  
“So, we just have to figure out how to meet up, and maybe we can share supplies and stay together.”  
  
They had been talking for a couple hours now, hurtling towards dawn, and Trish was the third person to talk to Frannie. But all of them had… a tone. Like they were hiding something, or not telling her something, and Frannie just kept trying to push for more information because frankly, the more people together, the better…  
  
And she was hiding something herself, down below with blue eyes and dark hair and his life coming to an end.  
  
 _“We’re still at dock,”_  Trish said, on the other end, her voice more hushed.  _“We’re… we’re deciding some things.”_  
  
“Yeah?” Frannie asked, trying to sound nonchalant, hoping that it would prompt more information.  
  
 _“Yeah.”_  A long, long pause.  _“There’s a woman.”_  
  
Three minutes later, Frannie was staring off and listening to the sound of her brother and Kowalski and Fraser down below, and for the first time in what felt like forever since this started, she felt a real, genuine stirring of  _hope_. 


	126. ...entity...

Audrey might as well have been in the body heap again.

People didn't look at her. At least, not directly; she got sidelong looks that darted away quickly if she tried to meet them. Audrey knew her fate was in the balance. Under consideration. Discussed without her input. She didn't know why she stayed with these people, except that she didn't know why she would leave, either. 

Wandering around and trying to lend a useful hand only served to highlight the ring of no-man's-land she walked in wherever she went.

There came a time when she just sank to the grass and stared into the dirt. Useless. A non-entity. She couldn't say she blamed them.

She rested there a while, barely aware, drifting in a not-quite-sleep made imperative by the sheer terror of the past few days. Sometimes, she could feel the stares of the others, but she didn't bother to look up and try to meet them anymore. A breeze played through her hair. She pillowed her cheek on her knees.

It was palpable when one gaze changed to intent, rather than shameful curiosity. On instinct she looked up to meet it; dark eyes looked back.

The boy was painfully young, no more than ten, and he held his grandmother's hand tightly. Audrey thought she heard that the boy's grandfather had been lost in the last attack. He looked every bit as devastated as a ten-year-old should after it all.

Audrey offered him a soft smile.

He tried to muster one in return.

The grandmother seemed to notice the exchange and tugged the boy's hand, muttering something to him in Spanish. He didn't look away from Audrey. After a moment, he shook his head and untangled his hand from hers.

The woman was still objecting when Audrey found her no man's land unexpectedly occupied.

It was tentative. Slow. But wrapped his arms around her in an awkward hug, and the old woman bit her tongue, apparently not able to stifle the boy's compassion once the deed was done.

It took a moment's frozen shock for her to hug him back.

In that instant, the world was a little wider.


	127. ...gotcha...

_“We’re on our way,”_  a man named Harry said, and Kowalski felt his heart constrict.  
  
The radio contact had been important, but Frannie had given him and Vecchio a death glare whenever they tried to get involved. After everything that had happened the day before, Kowalski thought maybe they should try to heal the rifts as well as they could, and so no one interfered while she and they made tentative plans to meet if they could.  
  
Kowalski had no idea how to read nautical charts, but he could read maps and Fraser… Fraser was occasionally lucid enough to give them a hand, and he was apparently a pro. Said something about sun sighting and dead reckoning and something else, but he wasn’t well enough for that. But he could at least read a chart and there were islands and stuff, but then Fraser said something about Canada again, before fading out, so they didn’t actually figure anything out.  
  
Still, meeting was the best chance they had. For something. Company. Help. Something.  
  
Frannie gave Kowalski another glare when he went to take the radio, and answered, “Soon as we figure it out, we’ll tell you.”  
  
 _“Gotcha.”_  
  
The news that there was a recovering victim with them had changed everything. Gave them hope. Even Vecchio had started moving again; his eyes were still shadowed and tired, but he made more ramen and did his best to get Fraser to sip on it. Fraser was in pain and fever intermittently, and he was weaker than a newborn kitten, but… but if that woman there – Audrey – had lived, then maybe Frase would, too.  
  
It was enough to make Kowalski want to fall apart all over again. Didn’t even know why.  
  
“So, uh… we got a direction, Cap?” he asked Frannie, after a long moment.  
  
Frannie blinked at him with wide dark eyes, and for the first time in a… really long time, she even kinda smiled. “Not yet. Soon.” 


	128. ...ready...

When Maggie woke up, it was surprisingly peaceful for long moments, as she listened to the soft hum of chatter and smelled what seemed to be breakfast. The voices were only vaguely familiar from the night before, but between them and woodsmoke and cooking, it called to her earliest memories of home and safety.  
  
Then the sleeping world rushed away swiftly, and left her reeling, sitting up and breathing. And in her head, a new and entirely familiar wail, over and over  _Casey Casey Casey_ , the one that had not truly left since she watched him fall away from her.  
  
Maggie took a few deep breaths and the chatter silenced in the kitchen. Now that she was awake, she could feel the crisp edge in the air from outside and hear the muffled sound of car doors.  
  
“Morning,” Marilyn said, from the kitchen door. “How’s the leg?”  
  
Maggie did her best to keep the quiver out of her voice when she answered, with a vague little smile, “Still there, ma'am.”  
  
“Good.” Marilyn’s eyes were more concerned than her tone, by a considerable amount. “Breakfast is ready. We’re leaving in about twenty minutes.”  
  
“Thank you kindly,” Maggie answered, again with a wry twist of a smile, before she managed to pull herself up to hobble towards the kitchen.  
  
Sergeant Frobisher was in there, and hanging up his cast iron skillet on its peg. It seemed a pointless gesture, considering the plan, until Maggie saw the brief look of sorrow in his eyes before he schooled it back into steady, almost cheerful command. “Maggie Mackenzie.”  
  
Maggie felt her heart twist, at hearing her married name. “Sergeant Frobisher. Everyone’s ready?”  
  
“Almost,” Frobisher answered, mouth briefly tightening in consternation, before he was setting a plate down on the well-worn kitchen table. “How about you? Are you?”  
  
They were taking an overloaded plane as far as they could successfully get north, on a fairly limited amount of fuel, and she had been shot in the leg yesterday.  
  
“Ready as I’ll ever be,” she answered, sitting down and trying to ignore the dull ache, not in her leg, but in her chest as she tore into the breakfast. 


	129. ...escort...

The color of day was clear and clean, under the still-new light, and he was dully surprised that he felt as warm as he did, given how cold it was here.  
  
Turnbull leaned on 420, carefully sliding rounds into the cylinder of his .38, elbows on the roof of his cruiser, the blue sky reflecting off of the dirty blue paint, making him think of home. He felt warm. Blanket warm; weighted warm. Exhausted warm, the sort that settles in the muscles and demands sleep. Truthfully, he had tried the night before, but…  
  
He gave a faint shake of his head, and clicked the cylinder closed, reaching down to reholster the weapon on the gunbelt he hadn’t had off his hips in over twenty-four hours.  
  
The rest of the sergeant’s group had packed up their provisions in the other vehicles; there were three, but only two that were apparently taking the trip northwards. What was left of the fuel was being rationed out, and he didn’t ask for any. It wouldn’t do to take it away from those who would need it, especially now that he had been up to Cluff Lake and knew what a demanding drive these people were facing ahead of them.  
  
His own gaze was firmly fixed southeast.  
  
He dropped his head a little, looking down into the dirty reflected sky on 420’s roof.  
  
“Mind some company?”  
  
“Hm? No. I don’t mind,” he answered, picking his head up again. Maggie was leaning on someone’s walking stick, looking considerably better than she had when he had found her yesterday. After a moment, she came over and looked at the cruiser, then leaned back against the back door.  
  
“The sergeant says you’re planning to go back.”  
  
Turnbull looked southeast. Nodded. “I am, yes. There might…” Still be survivors. Still be _something_. It was Nipawin, it was his  _home_ , he was  _bravo four-two-oh_ , it was his town and it was his duty and…  
  
Something twisted in his heart and he winced.  
  
“Will you escort us north first?” she asked, without preamble, not looking away from him.  
  
 _I can’t_  was his first thought, and  _no_  was his childish second, and  _but the fuel_  was his third and…  
  
“You have the most ammunition of the group,” Maggie added, face passive and calm.  
  
 _I want to go home,_  was his fourth, and for the first time since Guy had pulled the trigger, he felt a genuine, soul-deep spike of desperate grief.  
  
Enough that he couldn’t even answer aloud. Only nod. 


	130. ...mountie...

The shot rang out across endless white, and after that, Eric was trudging. Regardless of the distance, he was exceptionally sure his bullet had landed true; though the animal had fallen back behind the snow drift and out of sight, Eric knew it had been a kill shot.

He took his time.

The distance closed with only the sound of snow under his feet, until the sound of something more base than even that joined it.

Thick, wet _tearing_.

Eric raised his weapon and crested the snowdrift, aiming for the noise, for his kill, for what should have been dead. The disease currently wiping out most of civilization had not yet been encountered in animals that he had seen. His family hadn't felt particularly threatened by the walking dead; they could take care of themselves. If it spread through the game, however...

No.

Huffing out a disgusted breath into the cold, dry air, Eric lowered the gun briefly to stare in disgust.

One of the sick was tearing away at the flesh of Eric's hard-hunted caribou, ripping through the skin of its belly and had just brought a mess of fur, skin, and gore to its mouth. Gnawing at it. Steam rose off the dead animal's gaping wound. The snow around the scene was stained and flecked with blood. 

The sick man appeared half-frozen, slow-moving and weak, but the sound of Eric's heavy breath finally caught its attention. It looked up from its stolen meal, glazed eyes that still managed to show some dawning realization of the more preferred victim's presence. 

Eric upnodded in grim, satisfied recognition. "Gerrard," he muttered conversationally. 

Gerrard's body heaved a noise in response, rising to stumble toward Eric, slow and even more stupid in the cold. 

"You want meat, Mountie?" He asked, echoing something he'd said to another Mountie not so long ago. He raised his gun, following the shamble of the thing as it approached. "No more supermarkets."

Another shot rang out in the white. 

Eric sighed.


	131. ...spike...

Tom didn't know when the flashlight had cracked. 

When he opened his eye, the searing light divided by a blurred crack was all he could see, and when he shut it the world was... red. Flesh red divided by blood vessels, like sleeping under the sky at noon. 

His throat was raw. The world was spinning. Or maybe he was rocking. Maybe both. 

Click.

The world was black again. Red spots. Blue spots. Drifting.

Click.

The blood vessels of his own eyelid seemed to crawl.

The world smelled of cedar. Of must. Of mold. Sweat and sick and tears.

Tom cranked his neck. A tic. He wasn't in control of it. It just happened. His own body violating him. Tom always knew he was kind of an idiot. A fuckup, a dime a dozen type of guy, nothing special. But he wasn't totally stupid. He liked goofy jokes and country music and slim women and TV documentaries. Guy stuff. About... about unsolved crimes and war and interesting shit. Earthquakes. Dinosaurs. Bugs. He once saw one about a kind of ant that could get infected with this... fungus. It grew inside their brains and made them do things while the fungus took over. Until the ant went off somewhere and died. A dead, rotting ant stuck to a leaf with a mushroom thing sticking out of its head.

It was nightmare fuel.

In the space between hallucinations, Tom finally got it. He didn't have the Goddamn decency to die, not like Willie. Didn't have the balls to shoot himself, either. 

He was the fucking ant.

His neck cranked again. Fingers twitched, too. Irrational anger flared in him and on the next jerk of his muscle he took the flashlight and threw it hard out the attic window.

It went through the blinds and shattered the glass. He could hear it hit the roof. Bounce off. Hit the ground. 

The spike didn't abate. His vision crawled again, even in the dark, like the walls around him were cracking. Moving. Shimmering. He sank fingernails into his hair. Into his scalp, and raked down to his neck. 

Morning light. A breeze filtered in from the broken window. Buffeting his hair.

His nostrils flared.

When the walls started to melt again, he screamed, slamming torn up hands over his ears.


	132. ...slaughter...

This was an evil place.

Diefenbaker understood the need to kill for food. It had its place in the natural world; he would judge no creature that had ended a life to sustain its own, not in the primal fight of survival.

But this. This place... this place was a perversion of that order.

Everything smelled wrong. It overloaded his senses, added to the wrong-smelling death of the human race that lingered in the background. Many animals had died here.

It was not ideal. He had looked to his pack; some of them held back, nervous, scenting the sickness of what had occurred here. But most, the ones tamed by humans, the ones who had never truly learned to hunt, only sniffed in starving interest. Diefenbaker could not hunt for all of them. There was no time to teach. 

So there was this place. This abattoir. Where human waste of life permeated everything.

The gate had been open. Maggie had nuzzled at his side. He had led his pack into an abomination.

 

Now, they stood in the heart of it, and what had been only heartsick revulsion was now a fight for their lives.

Creatures hung by their hind legs, cut, bled out but some still alive. Not alive. Sick. Animals that Diefenbaker understood to be called pigs that smelled like the ill and dying humans, their eyes glazed and unnatural. Writhing in their binds and snapping at the air.

He could not hear them, but the others held their ears down as though tortured.

There was nothing to feed upon here. Diseased. Rotting. Poison. 

He yipped to call the others to follow him, to leave this place and try to remove the scent of this evil from their fur.

They would not get far. The stench of the undead grew thicker still. Diefenbaker's lip curled into a growl, hackles up, and he could not hear the ragged squeal from the mess of free and running pigs as they bounded for his pack. Snapping.


	133. ...who...

If the dead could suffer from sleep deprivation, Bob was there.

Theirs was a battleground across the hereafter, it would seem, and he was damned determined to find out what that woman was, as what she _wanted_ was rapidly becoming clear. She followed him for each jump. It took her a while to fade in, but she inevitably did, if he waited too long. He just had to lose her long enough to get Benton alone. He couldn't risk her sending him into another delirium. 

The living world and the hereafter flitted by. His cabin. Buck's vacation home. The Borderlands. Caroline's grave. Benton's boat. His mother's home. The house he grew up in. Depot. Ellen's cabin. Any number of favored spots in the territory he shared with Buck. Hell, even his grave. He tried not to mourn for the state of the world as it passed by him. The faster he cycled through, the more unpredictable, the longer it was he could hold her off. 

When he landed in front of Benton, he still stopped to look around, reminded of days long ago when there might indeed have been a monster under the bed, waiting for his parents to fall asleep to get him.

Bob didn't realize his own state, but Benton sure did.

" _Dad_." It was rasped. Weak, but alive and _worried_.

"Hello, son." 

"Dad... are you...?"

"Dead? Oh, quite. We've been over this, Benton."

Even half-dead and having a complicated relationship with consciousness, Benton was able to look irritated.

"...all right, Dad. Are you all right?"

"Is anyone, in times like these?"

"You're looking... very... very pale."

Bob glanced down himself, smoothing down red serge. He shrugged, disregarding the question and getting straight to the point. "Who is she, son?"

There was guarded alarm in those tired, bloodshot eyes, and as Benton scrambled for an answer, Bob knew this was going to be a doozy. He shut his eyes a moment before screwing his mangled stetson on his head, facing this with his hands clasped behind his back and his duty-face on. 

"Out with it, Benton."

" _She_?"

"The curly-haired banshee Hell-bent on being a spectral pain in my behind, yes."


	134. ...skip...

The perception of time was corrupted.

There had never been a bender like this, and there was no water to prevent a hangover. 

Stupid. Stupid. He forgot water. He was stupid. The walls had grown thick with black moss, melted away into red light, and shattered into existance again. His hands ached from his bites and with the bruises from trying to beat them back to solid.

Tom felt time bend around him and back again. 

He'd had dreams of his grandparents. Of his grandmother's funeral. Black suits, rainy day. The smell of wet grass and the shock of the first time he'd ever seen his grandfather cry. Dimly he understood that it must not be real. The graveyard hadn't had a church by it, originally. Or a basketball court. Or a little boy resting under a tree.

There had been sleep in there, somewhere. He could feel the beveled imprint of the floor against his cheek where he'd missed any sort of soft landing and slept where he fell. It didn't matter how long it had been. Only that he was thirsty. 

The attic stairs were impossible to gauge once he'd convinced them open.

Everything ached more as he scooted down them by his ass. Bouncing down the steps like a little kid, half expecting his grandmother to yell at him from the kitchen to stop messing around. One step after another, every one jarring his bones like resonance through glass. Thunk. Thunk. Thunk. At the fourth he stopped and buried his face in his hands, rocking back and forth, barely fighting back the copper-tasting bile coming up.

Time skipped. He knew it passed because the bare lines of light cast from between heavy curtains in the downstairs windows had shifted when he was aware again.

Everything ached, and he was laying on a torture rack of the stairs digging into his back. When he lifted his head he realized his face was sticky-wet, and a wipe of his sleeve revealed a streak of blood dribbling from his nose.

His mouth was dry. That was why he was here. Where he was going. He pulled himself up by his hand and slid his ass down another step.

And another. And another.

Every thump came with a whimper. He couldn't tell how many he'd surmounted, nor how many more there were. How long it would take to get down them. He needed water. Needed... needed water...

It was a hot spike of irrational panic that had him off that step, trying to bound down.

It was inevitability that had him tumbling down the rest of them.

Pain met him at the bottom.

Time skipped again.


	135. ...voice...

“…by the time I had tracked her above the 62nd parallel to Fortitude Pass, I had lost everything. My pack, my supplies. A storm had been blowing for days. She was huddled in the lee side of a mountain crag, nearly frozen… very near death.”  
  
Ray didn’t know who Fraser was talking to. Didn’t know where his gaze was fixed; if it was here, if it was above the 62nd parallel. He listened anyway. It was almost… lyrical, like a recited poem, long known and repeated until it became fluid and something kinda like music.  
  
“So, I staked a lean-to with my rifle and draped my coat around her, and I held her as the storm closed in around us like a blanket, until all I could hear was her heartbeat, weakening. I kept talking to her, to keep her from slipping away from me, and it snowed for a day… and a night, and a day.”  
  
He couldn’t really imagine it; how long the day must have been, how long the night must have been. Ray’s world was all motion and city; there was no such thing as silence, so complete that he could hear someone’s heartbeat.  
  
Or, maybe he could, now.  
  
“When I couldn’t talk anymore, I put her fingers in my mouth to keep them warm. I don’t remember losing consciousness, but I do remember being aware that I was dying. And then, I heard her voice, reciting a poem. Over, and over, and over again. I couldn’t make out the words, but I couldn’t make myself stop listening; she had the most beautiful voice. It was as though I had known her a thousand lifetimes…”  
  
Fraser’s voice was weak and rough. Ray couldn’t stop listening, himself.  
  
“The next day, the storm broke. We were alive. After a day, we found my pack; we ate everything I had in one meal. It took us four days to reach the nearest outpost. We camped just outside of town, in sight of the church steeple, and I held her in my arms. She asked me to let her go; no one knew that I had found her.”  
  
Silence fell. It might as well have been a day, and a night, and a day.  
  
“She had a darkness in her. And the most beautiful voice.” A beat. “I turned her in. She was the only woman I ever loved, and I sent her to prison.” 


	136. ...monster...

The consequences of never really knowing his son were starting to catch up to him. 

They all had weak spots. Secrets, embarrassments and polaroids of bare and half-frosted backsides painted with googly eyes and reindeer horns, hidden in desk drawers somewhere waiting for blackmail at the wrong Christmas party. Buck, himself. The Dudliest of stereotypical Do-rights, every last one of them, but somewhere along the line Bob bought into Benton’s own squeaky-clean press and that mistake might just kill the boy. 

The father-and-son primer Bob received next was the single most uncomfortable exchange this side of the proctological waiting room. In many ways, it was far more intimate. The boy’s rifling through Bob’s own diaries had brought them into some strange familiarity, but it hadn’t involved eye contact. It hadn’t involved questions. And it hadn’t resulted in a mix of shame and defiance that reflected almost preternaturally in Benton’s eyes. 

What was he going to tell the boy?   _There was a woman, beautiful woman, an old friend of Buck’s and mine, and while she was still wearing black for her husband, I warmed myself in her bed._ Would that even make any difference now? 

What would Bob say?   _We’re all human, son._

Was that even the truth? 

"I thought she was an angel,“ Benton breathed, honest fear in his eyes. The confusion of a little boy’s nightmare in the dark of midnight and the stir of the covers when he’d plead to sleep with them for just one night. Bob wasn’t sure that had ever really happened. Perhaps it was a false memory, implanted by parental zeitgeist. "Dad, I think she’s a monster." 

"I think there’s a monster in all of us, son." 

It was the wrong thing to say. Something in Ben’s eyes went hurt, then closed off, a flicker of both before he turned his head away and closed his eyes. 

Bob cursed himself and closed his own.


	137. ...cornered...

Two of Diefenbaker's packmates fell immediately, and he counted himself lucky that he could not hear the horrible noises that went with that torn flesh.

They had been cornered, the best option going over the creatures instead of through or away from them, and they fell upon Diefenbaker's pack with ravenous hunger.

He could smell Maggie lunging ahead of even him; there were rare times of danger and pain that Diefenbaker had observed humans appearing to speak to the being they perceived to be their maker. It was when he lost sight of her that he suddenly understood this apparent desire. 

Sick blood coated his mouth when he tore out the throat of one of the attacking creatures, jamming his sense of smell. He had to hope.

There was no defeating these beings, and it looked as though there wouldn't be any cutting through them, either. Missing a throat only slowed this one, rendered it seething blood through the gaping hole, something Dief only saw for the briefest moment as he scrambled across the bloodied floor to take one of the smaller dogs by the scruff and fling him out of the way of a charge. 

He could taste the contaminated blood in his mouth still as he leaped over an infected, moving body, his paws scrabbling on the ground before he fell. The dog he had just tried to save was torn apart before his eyes, and then he knew there could be no more moments of pausing. Those who would make it would need him to lead them away; those who didn't...

Dief snarled. Another pig rushed; he darted around it, snapping at it, pointlessly, and kept moving; for the stairs, for the way back out of the killing room.

The sunken face of a man in a tunic stared back at him from the stairs for the moment's certainty that it would reach for them and they would be pinned between unliving man and beast. It merely stared. Glazed eyes, blackened hands, it was only a body laid upon the steps. 

Diefenbaker yipped and bounded over the body, willing his pack to follow.


	138. ...impossible...

The climb north to Cluff Lake was mostly conducted in silence.

Buck gripped his steering wheel.  Ahead, a blue and white cruiser lead the way.  Behind him, in the back of the Blazer, Julie and Patty slept uneasily, and Marilyn had her arm wrapped around Julie's shoulders.  Beside him, Mack watched out the windows, silent and patient and waiting.  In the truck that followed were Len, Jake, Helen and the businessmen.  Jim Black had set out from the cottage on foot, alone, carrying supplies and the keys to Buck's cottage; the goodbye was simple, and then over.  

Buck was reasonably certain they'd be saying farewell to Turnbull at Cluff Lake.  Even though the boy didn't have enough fuel, likely, to make it back so far as La Loche where he could scavenge.  Even though he hadn't slept in over a day and was still seriously injured.  As to how he'd ever make it to Nipawin...

Then again, Buck had no idea how any of them were going to make it.  Maggie's fuel situation was serious.  They could end up taking off only to crash into the trees.  And they were taxing that plane's payload.

Sometimes, there were choices that had to be made.

Sometimes, they were impossible ones.

He thought about the businessmen.  Thought about leaving them behind with the truck, letting 'em fend for themselves.  It would put them back in a safer range for flight, for however far they would have to go.  Might buy 'em some breathing room.  Something.

Buck considered it even knowing he'd never actively do it.   He had to try to at least see them to some tentative safety, and the Cluff Lake mine wasn't that.

No, it was a fully staffed and operational uranium mine.  Turnbull hadn't seen more than one, locked into the radio room.

But there were others.  Somewhere up there.

Buck shivered and kept driving.  Sometimes, there were choices to be made.


	139. ...tell...

“I think we’ve got it,” Frannie said, chewing on her bottom lip and looking at the chart.  At least, she kind of had an idea because of that lighthouse.  It was better than nothing, and she knew they were north of it, and so she managed to get the boat started and turned in that direction, where the compass said they were going South.  Kowalski had eyed her, looking ready to open his mouth, then made a frustrated noise and went back down to take care of Fraser.

Good.  'Cause it was about damn time Frannie got to be the one to save the day.  At least it wasn’t the kind of soulless noise that it coulda been.

 _“We’ll do our best,”_  a woman named Elaine said.  She sounded tired and sick and miserable, but she was apparently the one most in charge down there.  Turned out that she and Ray were both from the 2-7, that she’d been a civilian aid there a few days and a whole lifetime ago – after she’d had some time to think about it, Frannie realized her voice  _did_  sound familiar – but when Frannie tried to give Ray the radio, he’d just shaken his head.

Now Frannie nodded, businesslike, and pretended that her guts weren’t shaking so bad she wanted to puke up what little food she’d gotten.

“Did you tell ‘em?” her brother asked, quietly, making her jump a little.

Frannie didn’t want to answer.  Didn’t want to pretend she didn’t know what he was talking about, either.  Because even though they’d taken the chance of telling her about the woman who’d recovered, she hadn’t told them about Fraser.  About how he was infected.  About how he might recover.  About how he might  _not_.

“Frannie.  Did you tell 'em?” Ray asked again, and she turned away from the wheel to glare at him.

“What’s it matter, Ray?  You’ve got your job, I’ve got mine.”

Ray’s green eyes hardened and Frannie gritted her teeth together.

“It matters,” he said, at length.  "What are those people gonna do when they find out?“

She didn’t know the answer.  Because the other woman might have healed, but Fraser wasn’t there yet.  "We’ll deal with that when we get to it, Ray.”

“Yeah,” he said, eyes narrowing briefly.  Then he went back to his Florence Nightingale routine.

Frannie turned back to the wheel and suppressed a shudder. 


	140. ...spider...

Haunting was a funny thing.

It was like a spider web; as long as everything was connected, even if it was difficult and wobbly and sticky and precarious, Bob could reach any point outward from center if he tried hard enough. Buck was damn difficult. This had proven next to impossible, and he was bordering exhaustion for the effort.

The information Benton gave him had been a long time leading him where he needed to be, but eventually Bob did break through.

The prison smelt of sealed-off death and decay. The walls were smeared with bloodied prints. Clouds of flies failed to heed the disturbance of the lone ghost Mountie, but they scattered for the undead that shambled the halls. Guards. Staff. The odd prisoner, too, all in various post-mortem states, and through the stench, Bob could sense what he was looking for. 

The creatures took no note of him, but he drew his service weapon and carefully avoided each shambler. It wouldn't do to walk through one of them. It wasn't something Bob had yet tried with the living; he didn't want to imagine what it would be like with the undead. 

Great Scott, what misery it must have been when infection spread in this place.

An infected with a half-devoured arm stopped and sniffed the air nearby Bob. He froze, looking the thing in the glazed eyes; it looked far past him, but that nose didn't. Another sniff. It gurgled a sound in its rotting throat, misting blood and bile, and Bob stepped away hastily, convincing himself not to fire. 

He stepped over bodies littered on the floor, headed for the sick beat that he'd homed in on. 

Being able to step easily through the door struck him as an aching cruelty of the universe.

The infected in this cell stood in the corner, bloodied hands - he could see from here that the fingernails had long since been scraped away - pressed to the walls. Black hair hung in greasy curls about her shoulders, fallen from the tie that still held a little of it back. The zombie seethed, standing there. Just seethed, a long-unnecessary bodily function forced through clenched, filthy teeth tinged with blood.

She stood perfectly still, aside from the breathing.

It was the most disturbing thing Bob had ever seen. 

"You," he said, too horrified to feel stupid for saying something quite so cliche.

Bob didn't know if he was shocked when the creature snapped its glazed, thousand-yard stare up into instant focus on him. 

_You_ , came the response from the ether; not from her mouth. Those teeth remained clenched, that wet seething still the loudest true sound in the room, the shambling of the infected outside the only counterpoint. The zombie tilted her head slowly, staring at him unblinking.

Bob raised his weapon.

The shadow took form in the air in front of the zombie, sweeping into being and solidifying only part way, the malicious look on her living-form face the clearest aspect of the apparition.

Both apparition and zombie screamed in horrific tandem, but only the shadow swept down on him, pressing him out the door into an explosion of gray.


	141. ...buzz...

Harry Reems was the only one to touch her.

Audrey felt like ruffling his hair. He was young. Or seemed it; couldn't be that much younger than she was. He'd lost his wife. Had to protect his daughter. But for her, looking at a bright-eyed vet felt like looking at a carefree bastion of youth, compared what what she'd seen. 

Everyone else flowed around her. It had only gotten worse. Anonymity would have been nice, at this point; Audrey hadn't felt anything quite like this since high school. Watched, whispered about. Glares. Unwanted, or worse.

Reems was hesitant. They were the same kind, though; doctors. They wouldn't refuse treatment, not even scared, and once he'd touched her clinically, he seemed to come slowly to touching her humanly. A squeezed hand. A shoulder-pet.

Everyone was mobilizing. As much as a group of civilians could fall under that descriptor, anyway. It wasn't that she didn't care that there were others out there, people who wanted to connect. It was that it meant, at best, nothing to her. At worst, it meant more that might cast a downward vote against her. The discussion and movement passed by her, all blurring together, but she was fully aware of the distance from Harry Reems at all times.

It was the only thing that made sense in the mess, since the little boy had been kept away from her. She was US military, for God's sake, she should be able to keep herself together; it seemed straightforward. This was as much safety as she would find. Shut up, sit down, wait and hope as all those people built up static in the air.

It seemed to buzz in her ears. Irritation. It would go away.

Two of them wandered by her, eyes wide on the woman when she spotted Audrey; there was a hiss, alerting the other. They hurried away. Like Audrey used to do as a child, when she was afraid of the dark hallways and wanted the light of her bedroom.

Irritating. 

Agitation. Chills. Wearing on her.

She felt as though the wall she'd been given to sit against had expanded outward, and she was dwarfed in a city of hostiles. It didn't seem real. Like the bushes, like the shower, like the body heap. Some painted on scene in a nightmare. It was just a wall. Just people. Whispering, bustling, living people.

Air didn't come easily anymore. Harry Reems was fifteen feet away, surrounded by three people, two male, one female. On the move. Incoming.

He was going to bypass her completely.

She knew what was happening. Of course she did; she wasn't immune to or above something like this. One tendril of sanity in the rush of time and space by her ears.

The world shrunk to static, quick breaths, and one thing.

Audrey's eyes looked far beyond him, but when Reems walked by, she grabbed his arm.

The static died.

 

  
With the death of Audrey's static came the clarity of the real, brutal world. She felt every aim. She locked eyes with Harry.

Words deserted her. Part of her wanted to apologize. Part of her wanted to spit at anyone who would want her to. Even Harry seemed uncertain, but it was the edge of grief in his eyes, the hope that his terror was wrong, that kept her from wanting to spit at him, too. She knew without looking that some of those aiming at her now were hoping for a reason.

"Panic attack," she finally managed to spit out.

Harry grasped her forearm with the arm she'd gone for. The other raised a hand.

Some were slower than others to lower their weapons.


	142. ...spear...

“God _dammit_!” Buck snarled, trying to keep the truck on the road while poor Patty sobbed in the back. **  
**

There they were.  A flood of ‘em, and all of 'em looking starved.  All of them damn _faster_  than they should have been.  Turnbull had nearly ended up in the trees, keeping his cruiser on the barren, piss-poor road by some grace unknown.  Buck was just trying to get through to the plane a quarter mile away, sitting there in yellow, looking something like salvation.

The infected came streaming in ghastly waves; there couldn’t have been more than a hundred, but it seemed like there were so many more; came out of the trees and across the open space of the airport to the south and west.  Buck gunned the engine, trying to mow _through_  and even with four wheel drive, his truck  _skewed_ , sliding a couple of feet and right up to the zombie on the other side, who started beating and clawing at the window beside Mac.

Patty screamed and screamed, her high child’s voice piercing the air.  Julie was frantically trying to quiet her.  Buck didn’t dare check for the truck behind them.

And that was when Buck heard the first gunshots.

_Maggie._

Out of a windshield, stolen in glimpses between his own steering-wheel wrestling match, he could see her firing out of the passenger’s side window of Turnbull’s cruiser, even as Turnbull was wrestling the car into the cut off to the airport itself, the back end fishtailing before righting with another jerk.

Bob had no idea how they were going to get to that plane, load up and take off with this many bodies in the way, but he didn’t have a whole lot of time to consider it before  a zombie bounced off Buck’s hood, rolled up, and turned the windshield into a sheet of blood-stained, cracked safety glass, its lower half  _spearing into the truck._


	143. ...fixed...

“The second truck rolled!” Maggie hollered, over the sound of the wind and the sound of 420’s engine and Turnbull was shocked that they weren’t on their roof as well as he wrestled with his cruiser, whispering prayers under his breath to God, to fate and to General Motors, trapped somewhere between the adrenaline of wanting to survive and the recklessness of something that could not be called suicidal, but perhaps lived within the same family as it.

“Survivors?!” he yelled back, white-knuckling his steering wheel with all that he had in him, and even as he asked it, Turnbull knew that the answer would be grim.  If not now, then in only moments.

Perhaps Maggie knew he knew; she didn’t answer that, just fired again and again, trying to clear the way for the sergeant’s vehicle; when Turnbull could glance it in the mirror, he could see the infected, wiggling  _body_  shot half through the windshield.

The majority of the infected were coming from the southwest, the area of the mine’s operations, and even if all they did was stand there, they would stop Maggie’s plane from taking off.  She was already going to have a terrible time making up for the added weight; having that hampered further by  _bodies_  would see them all to their ends here.

In the end, the answer that came was elegant in its simplicity and, Turnbull realized with more calmness than even he expected, likely to see his own ending here in northern Saskatchewan.

No matter.  His best friend lay between himself and Nipawin.  Three points on a map, two fixed.

“I’m going to get you to your plane. Be prepared to take off,” he called over the sound of the engine, pulling ahead as his cruiser’s tires found bite in the snow.  He stopped looking behind him, then, even in the mirror.

“Renfield–” Maggie started, pulling back into the cruiser as they moved further away from the now-much-slower truck.

Turnbull pumped 420’s brakes and came to a neat stop only a dozen steps from the plane, then leaned over and grabbed his portable out of his duty bag, where it had been left turned off to preserve its battery.  He shoved it into her free hand, meeting her startled and startling eyes. “Pick off any that come near and any you can from Sergeant Frobisher’s vehicle.  I’ll call when the runway is clear.”

A thousand protests crossed her face in a split second, and he knew, and she knew, that he wasn’t likely coming back from this.

Then, because it was the only choice of many bad choices, Maggie closed her hand around the radio, got out of the cruiser, closed the door and backed away at a limp, mouth in a grim line. 


	144. ...blue...

When they taught pursuit driving in Depot, Turnbull had a knack.  He had been driving an '88 Caprice, which had the same stock frame as his '93 (if less aerodynamic) and he picked up how to maneuver a large vehicle at excess speeds in hair-pin turns rather quickly.  Even in the worst moments of Depot – of which there were many – he was good on the course and it was one of the few areas where he scored higher than average.

He waited until he was down the runway from Maggie's plane, down back towards the turnoff, and control-slid 420 sharply sideways until they were facing Frobisher's crawling, ailing truck.

There was no saving the occupants or supplies of the second truck and most of the infected were clustered around it…  _feeding._   If Turnbull had any remaining ability to be repulsed, he would have cringed at the sight, but he had run out of horror and now all there was this.

He hit his lights and siren and gripped his steering wheel.

Even in the chaos of groans, of cut-off screams, the sounds of both pistol and rifle fire, of rumbling engines and the wild beat of his own heart, the whoop and wail of his siren cut through the noise.  Precisely as it was designed to do.

Turnbull did his best to ignore the burn in his eyes and the clawing heartache in his throat, the one he’d managed so far to keep breathing around.  But if he was going to forfeit his rights to continue to do so, hopefully saving the others, then perhaps it was time to feel it.  At the end.

He certainly caught their attention.  Several abandoned Frobisher’s truck and started his way; some stumbling, but most of them moving quickly enough that he pressed himself back deeper into his seat unconsciously, the biological dictate of  _fear_ , and after a few moments, those in  the Blazer managed to get the infected out of the windshield; it slid down, fell under Frobisher’s tires, became a smear of something red on ice and snow.

Frobisher peered out of the hole at him, and even at this distance, Turnbull could see the dawning realization and see him saying,  _"No."_

_I'm sorry._

He waited until the infected were almost to the hood of his cruiser, panting through his nose, gripping hard to the steering wheel.  He needed as many as he could get, and he needed not to lose them once he had them.

When the first blue, cracked fingers glanced off the blue paint, he shoved the cruiser into reverse and backed up, just fast enough to keep out of reach, just slow enough to keep them from breaking towards the yellow plane or back towards the Blazer that was finally able to move towards said plane.

And just as he'd hoped, they followed.

He wished he'd thought to ask Maggie how much runway she needed, but it was too late now.  Turnbull backed up, then put 420 in drive and headed down towards the treeline at the very far end with his entourage of undead in tow. 


	145. ...faithful...

As last stands went, Turnbull wasn’t sure if he would consider it climactic or anticlimactic.

The speed with which the undead followed 420 was far from a high speed pursuit. The siren whooped through the air in the middle of nowhere, almost literally so; there was no one to warn out of the way ahead and only lurching, desperate bodies behind.

Mostly, what he was aware of was _calmness_. A settling certainty, almost a relief, that this would be it. Even if they didn’t hem him in and end him, he would never make it back to find fuel; he likely wouldn’t even make it back so far as Frobisher’s cabin. He thought, perhaps, the relief was that he had done his duty to the last.

That at the last, he had managed to maintain the right.

He looked into his rearview, but the view of the plane was obscured by the bodies, and the bodies themselves were keeping pace. He hoped it was enough.

He was just about to the end of the runway when the voice came over the radio. Deep, calm on the surface, but thrumming underneath with tension. Even with everything happening, Turnbull allowed himself another kind of relief: Frobisher had made it to the plane.

_“Turnbull.”_

Turnbull huffed softly to himself, but he didn’t pick up the mic to answer. Doing so would be pointless, at this juncture.

_“Turnbull, answer me.”_

I’m sorry, he thought again, even if he wasn’t quite sure how true that was. He rubbed his thumb against his steering wheel, at the smooth space worn into it over the past few years of driving this cruiser nearly every day, and thought that if he could not be in Nipawin, then there was no where else he would be.

There was a long moment, then Frobisher’s distinctive rumble again, this time more clipped. _“Bravo four-two-oh.”_

Turnbull was out of runway. The shard of grief that hit him did so hard enough to make him breathless, at the sound of his unit number, a call he had answered so many times that it had become as much a part of his identity as his own name.

_“Bravo four-two-oh, respond.”_

He managed to fishtail the cruiser and face the dead. And then he picked up his mic.

“Bravo four-two-oh.”

_“I’ll get you back there, son. I’ll get you back to Nipawin.”_

It wasn’t what he expected to hear and something inside of him leapt, shocked, like running into an electrical wire. He had put enough space between himself and the mass at the end to buy himself a few moments thought, but only a few.

Despite the dents, despite the battering she had taken, the vibration of his cruiser’s engine through the steering wheel was steady. Faithful. Somewhere to the southeast, their home.

When he realized how very– unfair it was, that only one of them would make it back there, he knew he was leaving yet another part of himself in northwestern Saskatchewan to serve as monument and memorial to the reality of loss itself.

He pressed on the gas. Hit undead, knocking them off; one rolled over the hood, another smacked off the wing mirror. It didn’t take him long to get to the other side and then just a little further, and then he slammed open the door. Ripped the passenger door key and the key ring right off of the ignition key on adrenaline fueled desperation, a refusal to give up this last thing.

“Thank you,” he whispered, vision blurred for the tears he didn’t even take a moment to swipe away, squeezing over the thumb-worn spot he’d left on her steering wheel, a heartbeat’s farewell.

He left 420 running, lights and siren; slapped the doors locked and ran for the plane, pouring every bit of speed he had into his long stride and not once looking back to see her engulfed in walking bodies.

He felt every step like a wound.


	146. ...gray...

This wasn't the peaceful snow of the Borderlands.

Everything was gray. Bob shut his eyes, letting go of a breath that was taken away by the gray fog. When he felt it, he'd resigned himself to another detour, plenty of fight left in him, but...

He couldn't resign himself to this one.

"No," he whispered.

The wind picked up, whispering laughter, scattering his uniform with snowflakes. 

It faded, leaving him alone with the gray. He tried so hard to will himself away that he screamed through gritted teeth, but each time, he was held fast. 

He would have to follow this to its end or exhaust himself trying. He might as well have been walking into his nightmares.

Bob Fraser trudged.

It should've been a landscape like a thousand others, but he knew where he was. Knew too well. He didn't allow himself a flicker of hope that maybe, just maybe, it would be different this time. Maybe she would show herself. Maybe he could ask forgiveness. 

He trudged, and somewhere along the way his red serge melted away to fur and layers, and the grey scattered in the fur of his hat.

The shape of what he was supposed to see was the most vicious crimson in all that gray. 

He trudged. Trudged, and fell to his knees by Caroline's body, gathering her up with not a sound of grief or a breath of horror. 

Snow fell. The wind blew. Caroline bled.

 

When her eyes opened, they were the wrong color.


	147. ...him...

Bob’s nostrils flared with a spike of hot, righteous rage.

Not this. Not here. Not now, and not _her_.

He pulled one arm back, fingers splayed, and jammed it hard into the chest of the monster wearing his wife’s form. There was no conscious understanding of what he was doing or how. It was imperative. The apparition’s grey-hazel eyes flashed with rage before that familiar face twisted in pain, and Bob’s fingers closed around whatever cold shard was lodged within.

With all of his soul, Bob pulled.

Caroline fell back limp, and the gray dust of Victoria Metcalf clawed at him.

Teeth bared, he shook her, gripping her now with both hands and every bit of willpower he had left. "What. Do you _want_.“

The wind picked up, snow torrenting down in that moment, whiting out almost everything. Bob yanked her closer. Face to face. She clawed at his hands, something that would’ve ripped them to shreds on her fingernails if he was alive to bleed. She roared at him. Her breath stank of death.

_"Him.”_

Bob wanted to shake her until it made sense, until she disappeared, until she hadn’t desecrated this moment in his life. He wanted to. He couldn’t.

The shriek came through the gale loud, clear, and terrified.

The Yank girl.

Held by her soul and almost completely grayed out by the snow, Victoria smiled at him in the split second before Bob was able to demanifest.


	148. ...interrupt...

Frannie coulda climbed over the side of the boat and flapped her arms all the way to the other one in joy.

It was jumping the gun, had been since they’d sighted it. Could be a ghost ship filled with shambling dead, at first. Maybe she would have deserved that. She wasn’t _cold_ , she felt _guilt_ , but what would they have done in her shoes? Desperate to get off a floating tin can that might still be her coffin, to touch someone who hadn’t… who didn’t… ugh.

Frannie wasn’t bitten, wasn’t sick, she deserved a chance, her _brother_ deserved a chance. Anyone would have kept it to themselves, wouldn’t they?

Except this bunch hadn’t.

The guilt didn’t stop her from wanting to fly over there, where there was something other than two accusing sets of eyes and one that didn’t always quite focus.

There had been a whiteboard near the radio. She would’ve doodled aimlessly on it, if this had been a week ago. Now it just had her name on it. Big, thick scrawl with an arrow pointing down at her, stupid and goofy, quick and effective. She waved it, bouncing up and down, tempted to shout even if shouting had meant death since the outbreak.

She tried not to feel like she was stealing something. Like the asshole who kneecaps the innocent to get a seat on the lifeboat ahead of someone else. Tried not to think about the consequences when they looked at the damn Mountie, and knew he didn’t have a bad case of the sniffles.

When the boat pulled into view, though, she knew that it wasn’t the undead. Because there was a pregnant girl on the other side, jumping up and down and waving her arms before being joined by more people doing the same, some spare measure of real joy expressed in a world seemingly devoid of it entirely.

“Ahoy!” she called, overlapping Trish’s “Hello!” and both of them were so excited that for a moment they missed the low _beat-beat-beat_ of a chopper’s rotor blades.


	149. ...flexed...

Transmitted through the hull of the boat, through the deck above, the sounds of yelling and the beat of something too mechanical to be a heart distorted, flexed sideways, righted again with another scream, a piercing sound like a shard of glass.

For a moment, Ben was back in Chicago; for a moment, somewhere else, too high above this to be a part of it, and then he snapped back into his skin gasping and yanking, Ray Kowalski’s wide, spooked eyes staring at him in the darkness for a moment, his mouth opening– “Frase–”

–as he reached for the cuffs with a silver key and then the cabin was inundated with shadows.


	150. ...picking...

Bob watched in horror, as what looked like a bunch of jumped-up yank commandos swarmed over the boats, repelling off of a pair of choppers, the big kinds meant to carry troops.

Somehow, it echoed a swarm of undead, except these had speed of organized purpose, not just the purpose of picking meat from a bone.

Somewhere in the ether of the Borderlands, a monster was attacking his family. Now, here in the waking, present world, a bunch of _humans_ were doing the same thing. Bob railed at them, ineffectual, as they screamed for everyone to drop their guns, as they hauled people out to line them up on decks. "What is _wrong with you?!_ “ he yelled, to no avail, the effort not even offering him a chance to feel better about these circumstances.

He watched, helpless, as they dragged Ben up. The boy looking sick and dazed, his eyes darting and rolling like a spooked colt.

Bob grasped for whatever was near, ineffectual though it was, pelting them with non-existent objects in hopes that even one would land. Never had he been such an anarchist. Never had he felt such a protective rage. All doddering humor gone, he tried with every facet of his soul to seize whatever essence of himself could press between worlds and move to weaponize the objects around him.

One by one each proved useless.

Somewhere, behind Bob or beside him or _in his head_ , something giggled.


	151. ...cleared...

It didn’t take the occupants of the plane too long to fall into dazed, miserable silence.

Uranium City was out of the question, since they’d put a hole in Maggie Mackenzie’s leg. That left Fort Chipewyan as the next best prospect for– anything. Rest, fuel. People who might not shoot at them. They were armed and there were enough of ‘em to put up a fight in that plane, but no one wanted more bloodshed. They’d all had too much for several lifetimes.

Buck tried to be a good enough man to mourn those dead businessmen and the other survivors that had been back in that second truck. Tried to be good enough to feel shame for stacking that deck the way he had, putting everyone he cared for most in his Blazer and keeping the two young Mounties in that cruiser ahead of them, knowing it was a possibility that something might happen just like it happened. He tried to tell himself that he owed it to them to feel bad about their deaths, and in fairness, he thought when he had time, he might just. But he told himself he should now, and he failed.

He failed. Failed to feel bad. Failed to mourn. When he heard Julie’s voice or Patty’s, he failed. When he heard Marilyn doing what she could for Turnbull, he failed. When he felt Mack’s presence at his shoulder and looked over to see Maggie flying this beast of a plane, he failed.

_God help me,_ he thought. _God forgive me._

He watched Maggie pull the microphone off of the bracket, and didn’t fail to note the way her hand trembled. Fatigue or more than.

“Fort Chipewyan control; de Havilland foxtrot-romeo-whisky-lima at twelve miles southeast, inbound and requesting permission to land,” she said, and even with her hand shaking, her voice was steady and businesslike.

She had to repeat herself twice; Buck didn’t believe she’d get an answer.

Until she did.

_“Foxtrot-romeo-whisky-lima, Fort Chipewyan; you are cleared to land on runway 4. Wind is eight knots out of the northwest. You are not to disembark from your plane until you’ve been cleared by the RCMP.”_

Buck could all but feel the entire group breathe a sigh of relief.

“Thank God,” Marilyn said, which pretty much spoke for them all. In the back, he could hear Julie start crying and knew it was the sound of relief.

“Copy, Fort Chipewyan. We’re three Mounties strong ourselves,” Maggie answered, and this time, her voice quivered. “Thank you.”


	152. ...savior...

Limping, bleeding, walking shreds, perished shreds.

Diefenbaker's pack was in tatters, failed by his leadership, failed by a world of domestication that could not prepare them.

It was unwise, but Maggie settled her head over his neck and rested beside him. The whimpers of their remaining packmates washed over them, for Dief did not need ears to feel them. He could do nothing for them.

Maggie was warm; too warm for him, but he would not make her leave yet. She was the long hope of life for others like her, so dependent on a dying species that they would bleed into nothingness waiting for an opened can. She was canny. Clever. His last good thing; their savior, he hoped.

She licked the top of his head, and he whuffed a warning. She paused. Considering defiance. Though alpha to the very last, this pleased him. It held for several breaths, no eye contact needed for the challenge to settle on the air. He felt her give over, and the loss that came with it.

Maggie resettled her head on his neck, releasing a deep sigh.

They breathed one another for a little while, as the world got hotter. Too hot. Too dark. Dief panted.

Theirs was a quiet goodbye.


	153. ...legacy...

Death had its place. So did fear.

Diefenbaker had seen many creatures to their deaths, had smelled each one's fear, had been grateful to them all for providing him with food.

He found he was afraid to die.

Licking the wounds did no good, and tasted of the same tingling sickness that coursed through him now, but he did it anyway. Whining softly to soothe himself. Other canines soothed one another, sound lost to him absent what he could see of their ribcages in motion, but smelling of the same fear. They were the same as him, in death. Fearful and whining. He should not have underestimated them for their domestication; each had acquitted him or herself valiantly, even the tiniest among them.

Maggie would carry his legacy. Hopefully, if copulation had been successful for more than mutual comfort, she would do so in more ways than one. She smelled of him now, wherever she was. Under sickness and filth, Diefenbaker smelled of her.

The illness was cold, sometimes. Others, like now, it was hot. His mouth tasted of foreign things and earthy decay.

Diefenbaker's eyes fell closed.

Benton had been a fine packmate. Alpha, so far as Benton was concerned, but forever still learning, still a pup in ways he could not yet understand. Diefenbaker believed against scent evidence of this world that his companion had survived. He hoped that Benton would find comfort, and perhaps another to nip him figuratively on the nose when he required a reminder of his own limitations. The thought was warm. Dief whuffed his affection weakly.

He opened his eyes to look at the sky, and doing so would be his last formed thought. He laid his head on his paws and whined a final time.

Diefenbaker was afraid. The heat was sweltering. Bright, until it was black, and a breath out, and nothing at all.


	154. ...parted...

“This way, keep moving.”

The soldier’s voice seemed almost bored. In his state of half-there, half-elsewhere, Fraser wondered how anyone could feel safe enough to sound bored. He managed to keep his feet under himself by some grace unknown; he knew the Rays were supporting most of his weight, but he did his best to help them.

He could smell the difference between them as clearly as he could see it.

“Diefenbaker,” he grunted, afraid he’d lost his half-wolf somewhere, trying to hear for the click of claws on hard floor beyond the too-loud, too numerous sounds around him. “Dief,” he tried again, but he couldn’t manage any authority to it.

When Fraser could see – really see, take in the world around him – it was sharper than even his excellent visual acuity could allow for, and he could see them being walked (nudged? pushed? herded?) down a corridor made of heavy duty chain link fence, clearly hastily erected but also clearly solid enough to contain them. When he could see, he caught a flash of blonde hair and the terrified posture of the woman who had survived, something he wasn’t yet sure he could be doing. He could see Francesca’s relief, Ray Vecchio’s apprehension and Ray Kowalski’s edged protectiveness.

When Fraser couldn’t see, he called for Diefenbaker, even knowing that the wolf would not hear him, even though some part of him knew they would never see one another again; that hopefully Dief disappeared into the woods and back to the wild from which he came. But he called anyway.

In the end, it was a lonely sound.


	155. ...wash...

The water was bloody.

It was his own blood as it dripped into the tub. Tom's head was under the tap, one weak hand feeding it to his mouth as it dripped all through his hair and down his back. The tub edge dug into his gut where he draped on it from on the floor. His knees were uncomfortable, one on the bathmat and the other on tile. He might've been drowning, but he was so thirsty that he didn't care.

He couldn't remember dragging himself here, and didn't know how long it had been since he must have fallen down the stairs. Something in his neck stabbed pain at him with every motion. He could feel bruises and aches everywhere. His jaw hurt. Something might've been broken, but he wasn't sure what or where, through the haze and the pain.

Tom drank, and he breathed, and he coughed, and he hurt. He drank more. Breathed, coughed, hurt more. Drank more. 

Time skipped.

He was half-against the wall, hair damp, the water still running. Running, but turned... brown.

Watching the water drip away to mud stretched on until it dripped away to almost nothing. Run dry. Somewhere along the line, Tom started laughing.

He never knew why; never even thought to question it. It wasn't funny. Nothing was funny, but his lungs felt like they could burst for the laughter. He reached into the tub, smearing mud and blood across the inside in one silt-stripe of disgusting color. 

A stab down his neck took up steady rhythm as he dragged his way off the floor by wet and bloodied hands. Laughing. Until he sobbed, something about the fat tears running down his cheeks itching in the trails they left in the blood smears he could feel dried to his skin. 

He made it as far as the hallway rug before his lungs took over his entire disgusting being, pulling a veto amidst the hysterical laughter to desperately drag at the air. His knees hit the floor, his face met carpet. Damp. Coagulated blood rubbing off.

The rug was ornate. Swirls of blue and red and cream. Stately. Green corrupted across his vision every few seconds. 

The spots of oxygen deprivation floated before his eyes.

He breathed. Hot air of a face pressed against the carpet and choked by the dust of days' abandonment, somehow sharp to him, sharper than it should ever be.

There was no air in this house.

He forced himself up.

Time skipped.

Willie was somewhere over there.

There was more air out here, under the sky. Grass was an awful pillow; hard ground under the agony of his neck, the blades of it pricking at his skin. Tickle. Itch. The whole world smelled of dust and decay and blood. The filth of it coated his lungs. Tom could feel it. Suffocating him.

It started to rain.

Tom closed his eyes.


	156. ...guardian...

“Move along. Blankets, food and water ahead. Keep moving.“

Ray Vecchio held Fraser closer to his side, keeping him upright, and kept walking. They were surrounded by military men carrying guns, and they’d all been checked for bites, and even Benny and the blonde got the wave through, and that had surprised him. The guys carrying the guns weren’t holding ‘em on them or anything; in fact, they’d been nothing but reassuring this whole time, and when it came from crossing from the choppers to the base buildings, the guns were always pointed away.

It was a fucking military base with a razor-wire double fence. There were guns and ammo, and guys trained to use 'em. Yeah, they’d confiscated all the guns of the group coming in, but they would get 'em back once everyone was checked again by a doctor.

"It’ll be okay,” he said to Benny, who was shivering and pale and looked so wrung out, so fragile, that Ray thought maybe he was gonna shatter all over the ground if they stepped wrong.

He didn’t think what he was saying was true.

Why did they let Benny and the blonde girl in? Why didn’t they seem surprised by them? Why did they all act like this was routine? Why did they actually take the guns? Where were they going? Would they ever get their own guns back? Ray thought not. Something was messed up here. Something that they were too outgunned and outmanned to do anything about. Those military guys stormed their boats like commandos, then had the fucking gall to apologize after everyone was disarmed and scared witless.

It reminded Ray of the mob. Put the fear of God into 'em, then smooth it over with razor threats dripping in honey.

Kowalski wasn’t buying it, either. Ray could see him taking everything in, could see him plotting escape routes, memorizing where they were, where they were going, how many corridors they’d crossed through. He could see it, and thank God one of 'em was, because all Ray could do was hold onto Benny and try not to step wrong.

“Just ahead,” the guy apparently in charge said, nodding ahead to an enclosed, fenced in area in this warehouse they were now in. It didn’t have any locks on it. The door was open, and inside were stacked cans of food and paper plates and forks of all things; a table, some chairs, a huge stack of military green blankets.

“Why a cage?” Kowalski asked, Chicago cool, casual. "What, you think we’re gonna run away?“

The military guy rolled his eyes, but it seemed almost light-hearted. "You’re in a top secret facility. That hasn’t changed.”

“What, the world ending didn’t grant us all super secret clearance?” Kowalski asked, a roguish smirk crossing his lips.

The military guy shrugged. “No. So, have some dinner, and later we’ll get you checked out, then you can be moved to base housing and get some showers.”

“Yeah, thanks,” Ray said, speaking up before Kowalski could mouth off any further.

He wished he could ignore the shiver going down his spine.


	157. ...candlelight...

It was likely only down to scavenged narcotics from La Loche that any of them managed to sleep that night. Sergeant DuPree had been thrilled to see them, once they’d all been gone over at gun point for bites; he asked a bunch of questions none of them had answers to, about the rest of the Force. Even when they couldn’t tell him anything good, though, he looked at them with watery dark eyes and welcomed them there with a thick voice.

Fort Chipewyan hadn’t gotten off entirely unscathed; there had been two small outbreaks brought back by people flying in, but they had been contained swiftly. There were benefits to being only reachable by plane. It boded well for Inuvik.

Maggie hadn’t run to bury herself in her mother’s arms in a very long time. Now, she didn’t want to do anything more than that.

They’d slept in the detachment building, laying on borrowed bedrolls under borrowed blankets, a group of deeply exhausted people who couldn’t sleep until Marilyn handed out some hydrocodone and ibuprofen, which knocked the edge off of pain and made them drowsy. Maggie found herself a space beside Renfield; remembered a moment in the dark where he looked at her in dull surprise and heartbreak so raw that she wished she could graft new skin around it to protect it from this terrible world.

As if by some mutual decision they arrived at silently together, they put their backs to one another; curling around their own wounds, but acting as a shield for each other, too.

Now, Sergeant Frobisher was out there bargaining for fuel, at least last time Maggie had heard his deep voice, and she was reorganizing her plane as well as she could in preparation for the next flight, which would hopefully see them to Lac La Martre and then onto Inuvik.

Now, if she could just figure out what trick of the mind or medication was causing her to hear things. Like a voice in radio static.

Right now, it appeared to be tuned somewhere between eccentricity and madness.

Maggie shook her head, trying to ignore the sensation; a buzzing in her ears, an uncomfortable sense of not being alone on the runway. Frobisher was in the building with the other sergeant and a small engine mechanic, no one was here–

Until there was. Dressed in furs, flickering like candlelight. A man.

“–oh, nothing really, just my unlife falling apart around me and my son doing his best impression of the Exorcist. Anyone order the pea soup?!” He kicked the tail of the plane with a clang that should’ve woken several kinds of the dead.

Maggie’s jaw dropped as she stared, too startled to do anything else, until the man glanced at her, double-took and then started staring back.

“Hello,” she managed, cautiously, after a long several moments.


	158. ...hollywood...

Bob eyed the young woman in disbelief, his frustration and terror falling through the floor with his heart.

“Don’t do that,” he said, a touch hysterically. A man could be hysterical at a time like that. It was understandable, really. She wasn’t supposed to see him. Not when he was having a private conversation with the Almighty or the universe or whatever had the terrible combination of a sense of sick humor and omniscient power that put them all there.

“Do what?” she asked, clearly taken aback.

“See me!”

“But… you’re there?”

“I can’t help that!”

There was a moment where they both seemed to wonder if this was madness, before Bob noticed a look in her eye; wariness. Justified, he supposed. A sudden stranger in the midst of life-threatening insanity.

“What, you want me to disappear? Fine!”

Bob barely registered the haunting familiarity of her wide-eyed blink before he was gone, already startling the hell out of Buck. He tried not to feel too satisfied. It was hardly fair.

“What next, Hollywood? Am I the next big star of stage and screen?”

Buck Frobisher stared back at him, blinking. “Now, Bob, we all swore that nobody would release those tapes, and I’m sure that everyone there was trustworthy.”

“Oh, it’s not that! It’s not that at all! One of your baby mounties can see me, and neither of us were happy to see the other!”

Buck was practically a housewife with his hands on his hips like that.

“Which one?” he asked with a slow curiosity that Bob never liked.

“Ellen’s girl!” Bob flapped one hand in the air, as if he could wave off the entire event. “Never mind. We have places to be, I have a hell harpy on the backs of my boots and– wait. What’s that look for?”

Buck had gotten old, a little gassy, but that look in his eyes was no less sharp than when he’d been twenty. He looked past Bob – rudely, Bob thought – into some middle distance, thoughtfully. And then his eyes widened and he breathed out, “Oh. _Oh._ ”

“What? What do you mean ‘oh’?!”


	159. ...dodged...

“Well,” Buck said, slowly, “Looks like I dodged _that_ bullet.”

Bob was irate. Buck couldn’t entirely blame him; not only was he worried sick about Benton, but this was a hell of a time to find out that he was a father twice over. Buck was relieved it wasn’t him, because both he and Bob had warmed Ellen’s bed during that period of time after Matt Stern’s death.

Maggie just looked pole-axed, poor girl. But maybe she’d never sat down and done the math to find out how hinky it was.

“So– so you’re saying that you’re Bob Fraser. _The_ Bob Fraser–” Maggie said, slowly.

Never one to turn down some flattery, even at the actual end of the world, Bob shuffled. “Well, I don’t know about the _the_ –” His face flashed through a few expressions, as if imagining a few points of pride, before descending into rumors and legends he might not want to own up to. “It depends on what you’ve heard–”

“And you’re dead.”

“–As a doornail.”

Maggie nodded, blue eyes wide and a little anxious. But now that Buck was getting to know her, he could see where the echoes of Bob were, even if she strongly favored Ellen in many ways. "And you’re my– my father.“

Bob pressed his mouth into a line. "So it would appear. A fine woman, your mother. Fine in the sense of her bearing, mind, not fine in the sense of her appearance. Not that her appearance wasn’t also fine–”

“Now’s not the time, Bob,” Buck said, massaging over his face.

“Apologies.” Bob’s eyebrows seemed to give up at the same time he did.

“Is there anything else I should know?” Maggie asked, looking between them with some measure wariness. Buck closed his eyes for a moment, waiting to see if Bob would man up enough to handle this, or if he was going to have to intervene.

Bob cleared his throat softly. “You have a brother.”


	160. ...matter...

There was no safety here. Oh, fucking no, there was not. Because they were herded in and treated like cattle, and even with the reinforced fences and walls and guns, wielded by _humans_ , Ray knew this was bad fucking news. Bad. Real bad.

Then the blonde girl was taken.

“Hey! Hey, what do you think you’re doing?!” Ray screamed, and beat against the chain link fence of the area they were sectioned off in, watching as the clearly terrified woman tried to struggle against the three men it took to hold her. They had just come in, everyone holding automatic weapons, and then grabbed her. Just like that. Everyone had been so stunned and scared that they didn’t move; before that, they had tentatively tried to pretend they were sectioned off, herded in here, as a precaution. Y'know, to make sure no one was infected. To protect the soldiers and the base, until the survivors could be cleared.

Reality was far worse.

They never looked back. The woman was fighting and fighting, until she was gone.

When he turned back, half the others from that other group had their faces turned away in guilt. Most of them looked shell-shocked. Dazed. Disbelieving.

Vecchio’s eyes were haunted and when he met Ray’s gaze, he held a shivering, exhausted Fraser closer against him, protectively.

“No,” Ray said. Just a flat fucking denial. "No.“

Vecchio musta known what he was talking about. He gave the slightest nod, mouth quivering a little, and squeezed Fraser tight before moving. Getting ready to put up a fight.

Frannie was staring after the blonde girl, and mumbled to herself, "It’s just them, right? The… the ones who turned.”

Ray Kowalski shoved down the urge to scream in her face, and helped Vecchio move Fraser. Back. As far back as they could get him, people parting the way. He already knew they weren’t gonna fight for him. They didn’t fight for one of their own; they weren’t gonna fight for Fraser. That just left him and Vecchio, and God, Ray was so fucking scared. So fucking scared. Because what could they really do? What could they do, if they came back for Fraser?

Vecchio helped settle Frase in the back, then looked at his sister. Like he couldn’t really believe it. "Why should that matter, Frannie?“

Frannie looked back and stared, dark eyes welled up, tears spilling and spilling without her even seeming to notice. "The rest of us are safe, right? They said we were safe, Ray, they said we were finally safe, and he’s not _one of us_ , he’s… he _changed_ , so maybe it’s just to protect us, maybe they’re just trying to protect us!” Her voice had climbed in pitch and desperation.

Ray went over and stood at Vecchio’s shoulder, both of them positioned in front of Fraser. Still so damn weak. Not able to fight for himself.

They looked at each other across the space, and Frannie gave a little sob. Took a step backwards, away from them, her shoulders shaking.

She drew a shuddering breath, looking back in the direction the woman had been dragged. Shivered. Cried. Cried and cried and cried. Ray felt Vecchio twitch beside him, and reached over to give his hand a squeeze without looking away.

And then Frannie walked over.

Stood in front of him.

She put her back to them, and faced the door. Waiting. Ready.

Vecchio reached out to touch her shoulder, and she snapped back in a broken voice, “Don’t touch me.”


	161. ...play...

Tibbet hadn't had this much fun in years. When she managed to get out of Chicago in her squad car the morning after the city fell, heading south, she didn't realize then that the end of the world just happened to give her a place she could actually feel at _home_.

She chewed on a great big stubby cigar, purely to piss off all the Goddamn _men_. She liked to do that even as she was bashing a bunch of squishy heads in. Humanity was all the same, walking dead or not, it really was just a matter of getting something before it got _you_. They even leered the same as a lotta guys did in life. Tibbet had seen a whole lot of teeth in her career.

It was satisfying to knock that one's jaw swinging.

For all the screaming coming from inside that car, you'd think the zombies were one big horde, but it wasn't anything she hadn't seen before. Each day passed made their heads that little bit easier to pop like grapes, and she got a _great_ workout with her knockoff Louisville slugger every time she mowed a herd of them down.

The jaw thing did it, though; the little toads figured out there was another dinnerplate of interesting on the counter, and this one was a lot easier to reach.

"Hello, boys!" she said around that cigar, chewing it up further.

It wasn't like movies. Rotters didn't come at you one by one, letting you take each one down until it was time for the climactic death scene when you were finally overwhelmed. They rushed, as much as anything that shambled could rush, sometimes even knocking each _other_ out of the way to have their taste of living flesh. Sometimes Tibbet liked to get two at a time, and beat their heads together with matching two-by-fours. Didn't usually kill 'em, but hey, she was a Three Stooges fan.

Today, though, there were three left. And it definitely wasn't like movies, where axes swung easy and you didn't need time to pry it from bone and brain matter to stick it in the next one. Where bats took only one hit to crush a brainpan, and where two-by-fours didn't snap in half unless the character was about to die, and where the women cowered while the man did all the shootin'.

Tibbet didn't care about noise. The guy in the car was making plenty of it anyway, so if they were attracting attention, they might as well do it big. She angled her bat over her shoulder, and two zombies fell under headshots before she holstered her gun again. The third one didn't give a fuck about the fall of its comrades. They never did.

She spat out her cigar; she'd pick it up later, if it wasn't covered in gore.

Time to play.


	162. ...duality...

He wandered through her lands, and she watched him. It was a search for shelter, food and safety unlike Ben had ever made, and Victoria knew it.

Somehow that made her proud.

Her own lands were alien to him. A crystal blue, alien light shining from far beyond their own cursed stars. A blue, cold-burning star that shined like his eyes, standing high in the sky eclipsed by the planet they stood on, equal with two tangled.

The land came together, white sand mingling with snow, cracked and deserted. A bitter wind blew. He felt watched here; his shiver was delicious. His fever dream built on her afterlife in a way that she could only ever have dreamt of, and she adopted each modification like a wedding gift.

She wondered if somewhere, his fingers were cold. He must be close to death. His heartbeat felt like it flittered toward the cold, comforting static of numbness, the last tether of what she felt to her own body, trapped back on Earth. How he struggled. How he fought. It was familiar and irritating. Funny, and cute. His boots left marks in the white sand, unfaded in the wind. He covered his eyes against the blue light, his hat unable to protect him.

Navigating through leafless trees, he tried to find some sign of earth's directions, his compass spinning helplessly.

"Hm," he said simply, eyes flitting up to the sky. As if the alien hellscape before him wasn't proof enough that something was out of place.

Victoria never claimed she had fallen for a normal man.

Ben kicked the sand, testing its grain. He crouched. Licking it. Tossing it in the breeze, letting it fall away grain by grain, drifting toward the snow. He stood to follow, as if smelling the cold; distant, toward snowcapped mountains. The same bitter shade of barren blue that reflected his eyes that infused the land around him, but not the same sapped dry heat that dried the sand he stood in.

He wiped away a bead of sweat as something in the distance, as white as the snow but faster than the stirring echos, moved between the trees.

Victoria didn't recognize it. 

The ground beneath them trembled as her brow furrowed in anger.


	163. ...golden...

From the air, Nipawin looked peaceful.

The glass fogged around Turnbull’s fingertips, pressed against the cold over the town, gold and gray and deep green laid out below as they circled, too still to be alive. Beautiful, nonetheless.

“The airport is south of town,” he said into the headset, voice steadier than he had thought it ever could be. As they banked, he could see movement; people – former people – in the streets. Could see the bodies where they fell, too. He could see B418 sitting silently at Railway and Second, where his Staff Sergeant had undoubtedly fallen before Turnbull could get to him.

He had not quite gotten used to the feeling of his heart in this state; this state of broken determination, sore and bruised and raw, knowing that it would get worse before it would get better. If it would get better.

He didn’t have the imagination to wonder how he would handle it. Running into those he knew; those he cared for. How he would face them, no longer alive; faces he once greeted with warmth. If he would be able to pull the trigger.

If he would even want to.

Frobisher had promised to bring him home. The sergeant had been good for his word.

While it had surprised him that Frobisher had gotten word of another Mountie – in the States, no less – he had not given it too much thought, given that the sergeant told him that it had come from a Mountie. They were in an intact community with a radio; it wasn’t outlandish that he had been able to contact others. It was rapidly becoming clear that the RCMP had fared better than other large police forces.

Frobisher had not heard word of Nipawin, but when he had plotted the course to an airfield in Wisconsin, the great circle route would have taken him almost directly over the town. Given that Turnbull was familiar with it, given it was almost even halfway, it was the perfect place to stop for refueling, thus accomplishing more than one objective at once.

Maggie had been very quiet today Even as they flew, she had little to say; her expression was pensive and uncomfortable. Turnbull wished he knew how to alleviate that, but he couldn’t figure out what he would say to even start, especially given where they were landing soon.

He waited for one of them to tell him there was nothing left for him here. That it was no longer his home. It seemed the sensible thing to say. A logical assessment. He was still hurt, taking back a town of this size with only himself was just as certainly suicide as staying with his cruiser at Cluff Lake.

But neither said it. There were no words for his gratitude in that.

“I’ll bank around to give you another look,” Maggie said, into the headset, one she had done a fly by of the airport. “To help you chart your course.”


	164. ...ingrained...

The landing was uneventful; the wide circle Maggie made over town allowed Turnbull to take stock of the condition of it, and the air strip was far enough outside of the body of the city that any interest they would garner would be limited.

The wind was in their favor.

The landing was fairly smooth; they came down onto the prairie airport, bouncing only once before slowing and then turning and taxiing back to where the fuel tanks were. There was no power to the airport -- less likely from destruction of the dam than due to broken transmission lines -- but there was no reason they shouldn't have been able to refuel. They had brought equipment for such contingencies.

"We'll wait as long as it takes to refuel, and then twenty minutes more," Maggie said, using the help of her walking stick to limp around the plane. Frobisher stood off with his rifle in the crook of his arm and a borrowed pistol on his belt to stand watch for the moment, though there was every chance he was planning to switch places with Maggie.

Out here on the prairies, it was easy to see things coming.

Turnbull nodded, against the ache in his chest. It seemed that it would hurt no matter what he chose; to abandon this town and all that it meant to him, or to leave behind these good people who he had relied on for the past few days. He looked back at her and then nodded a second time. "Thank you," he said, a rough note crept into his voice.

"Good luck, Renfield," Maggie answered, with a thin and tight smile.

 

 

Coming home was an ache he would never be able to describe.

Overlaid on every street was memory; a morning, a night, snow or rain or brilliant sunlight. He had been patrolling Nipawin and the area surrounding for years, right out of Depot, and without ever quite meaning to, he had allowed it to overtake him, to grow over him like vines until he was a part of the greater sum.

But it wasn't _just_ the place. It was the people; the faces he saw every day, the names he learned. It was Guy, who followed him from Regina; it was Drew, who followed Guy. It was his detachment and his fellow Mounties, and the way that they were so very different from those he encountered in Depot. He knew store owners and bartenders and doctors and nurses; knew people on sight who he was happy to see, but never had cause to learn their names. He knew the criminal elements and the almost-criminal elements, which (if he was being fair), he ascribed largely to Guy.

He jogged through his streets and thought of his best friend. Thought of him laying there with his eyes forever fixed on Northern Saskatchewan's sky, behind his sunglasses. He thought of his cruiser, and even as he ran, he had to press his hand over his heart.

He ran across pockets of undead, but the wind was still in his favor; he would cut through yards, his map of Nipawin so ingrained that he didn't need to really think to find a way around. Their detachment was central. And nothing here was far from anything else.

His car would still be there. Not his cruiser, not B420, but the plain white sedan he had brought from Leaside so long ago.

His vision was doubled; not in the literal sense, but in the sense of overlaying what _was_ with what _is_ with the aching longing for what _should be._

The stolid orange-red brick of their detachment was just as he had left it. No windows were broken. In his pocket were the door keys for the side door, a separate set from the keys to his cruiser. He took a moment to peer around the edge of the business catty-corner to it, just to make sure there was no movement, then jogged across the road.

For all of his vision, and all of it's overlays, he was alert. His heart beat steadily and just hard enough to shift into fast action should he need it.

Turnbull still recoiled, as if he had been pushed, when he saw the note slashed in black marker across that door.


	165. ...rook...

He knew that writing; had seen it scrawled across files, accident scene documentation, post-it notes attached to boxes of tea, tags on the ribbons of birthday presents; countless little incidents, some more personal and most professional, enough to recognize the hand that penned those words instantly.

The note had not been there when he had left for the last time, going to try to save Staff Sergeant Severn. That meant, at some point after Turnbull had gone, Corporal Mike Chase had come back to this place.

_Get out of here._

Succinct, written fast. It was above the sign warning unauthorized people to keep out.

It wasn't what made Turnbull gasp for breath, though, eyes stinging with fresh tears. It was what was written under the sign, just as boldly.

_Be safe, rook._

He knotted his jaw as the words blurred, lost focus to the tears. For the moment, oblivious to everything else, even if that was suicidal in this world gone wrong. Some variation of those words had followed him from the very first night he had patrolled alone, as his FTO had stood and watched him pull out, to the very last morning of this town's life, given to him rushed but emphatic. In everything they had both already lost by then, not even really yet acknowledged, Chase had still taken that moment to see him off that same way.

Turnbull blinked and the words focused; his tears were hot on his face. _Don't be in there,_ he thought desperately, unable and really unwilling to stop the flood of them. _Don't be in there. Not you._

There were only two people in the world who could have given him that command with the guarantee it would be obeyed. One of them was his sister Myra, who largely raised him.

The other was his FTO.

He stood until he had control of the tears, but he knew it was a tenuous one. Because he knew as he burned that note into his memory that he would obey it. He knew he was going to go, because sometime after he had disappeared, Chase had known him well enough to know he was going to come back, and had cared enough to come back himself -- _Please don't be in there._ \-- to leave it.

His heart hurt with fresh pain, on top of it only hours or days old. Once he managed to get a grip on at least his breathing, he went to go unlock the door. He would leave, but there were shotguns and ammunition still in that building, and they were going to be needing that when they left.

 

  
Chase hadn't been in there.

Sandburg and Mitchell were. Turnbull's ears rang still, where he had fired his sidearm, laying his fellow Mounties to rest. He put them side-by-side on that floor and folded their hands on their chests, and he didn't stop crying, tears silent but for when they hit a hard surface. He grabbed shotguns and ammo, he took the extra sets of 420's and 414's keys, he looked around the building once more and thought about them all there, and then he left.

It was quiet outside. A fox was playing at the end of the parking lot, jumping into the brush at the edge of it; hunting, jumping backwards again, still wearing its heavy winter coat. A good sign; Turnbull already had heard and noted for himself that animals avoided the undead. The fox's presence indicated their absence.

He watched for a moment, then made sure the door to the detachment was firmly closed. He had just enough time left, if the battery wall clock inside was any indicator, to stop at his private residence and pick up clothing and uniforms, and still make it back to the airfield, given he now had his sedan again.

He passed his hand across the note.

_Be safe, sir._

As he turned to get into the car, rubbing his hand across his face to smudge off the tears, the fox had gone.


	166. ...orbit...

The landscape only felt right when Ben’s breath started to fog across the blue cast in the air. 

Now and then he could hear his heart pound in his ear, and he was distantly aware that his heartbeat didn’t sound right. He’d begun tracking indeterminate indents in the sand, rapidly mixing with snow, both being blown over and faded so quickly he couldn’t identify them. Due… no-direction. He didn’t know how long he’d been out here. Time had lost all meaning. The metronome of his heart had broken and occasionally transformed into a cuckoo clock.

Occasionally, the wind seemed to carry whispers. Or arguments.

He shook it off, swallowing the pain and sweat for the snow and sky, tipping his hat a little further back on his head and squinting after the stirring motion beyond the far away trees.

The world got comfortingly colder.

Time passed, the strange sky moving overhead, unearthly moons watching him like two piercing eyes. They were beautiful, even while they set his teeth on edge. He wondered how they maintained their orbit. What they did to the tides. What the hell they were looking at.

Someone screamed.

He stepped in a clear footprint as he heard it, ruining the track, his first solid indication of what he was tracking. Ben spun around to the sound, its reverberation cracking the landscape further, causing it to rumble violently as if the mountains he wandered were geologically active.

It wasn’t Victoria’s scream, but an inky black entity formed in front of him just the same. Vicious and familiar, fear written in her eyes.

It slapped him.

“Wake _up_!”

Handprint burning his cheek, Ben fell out of the vision to all hell breaking loose.


	167. ...ragged...

They weren't even treating Audrey like an animal anymore.

The restraints were vicious in their dull bite, but not so much as the brutal hands that held her mouth open as they took three of her teeth, one by one, without so much as a tylenol. Pain, tears, screaming and nudity meant nothing to those hands. She could barely breathe around the gauze they'd stuffed in her mouth to stem the bleeding, which dried out her screams to something ragged and tearing.

It hurt. It hurt so far beyond the physical pain.

Bright, hard lights tore at her vision when those gloved hands pried her eyes open. A man in white - _always got a cream cheese danish at the cafe, never came into the bar, had a face like a pug, she knew this man_ \- ticked off another notation on a clipboard. She had a clipboard like that of her own, somewhere on this compound. Maybe it had been hers.

The syringe made a distinctive sound, being uncapped.

Her handler was hidden behind a dust mask, blurred anyway, for all the wet that her mouth couldn't give to scream poured out from her eyes instead. The needle glinted in the unforgiving light. She bit down hard on the gauze as her skull was crushed hard back to the gurney, biting hard enough to taste more blood, to turn her cries wet and thick.

She rolled her eyes up, the most escape she could find, in the split moment before cold metal slid into the white of her eye.


	168. ...shortwave...

Benton's laughter was thready, maniacal and not entirely his own.

He fought, in between bouts of vomiting - he'd never in his life thought to be so rude as to direct it at anyone, but wouldn't you know it, he found the ill-manners - lapsing into hallucinations of black clouds and warm fur.

Occasionally, his vision cleared to industrial lights, fluorescent whites harsh above before fading back into blue and more blue. Sometimes, even now, he called for Diefenbaker.

His father's voice warbled in and out, long-distance shortwave, skipping across atmosphere. _"Benton, listen--"_ he would say and Ben wanted to laugh even harder at that. His desperation was only matched by his bitterness, and both of those were overlaid with terror.

His back hit something hard and his head rolled; there was pressure on his arms, on his legs; a skip, then they were heavy and immobile. The lights moved overhead. _Have I been shot?_ he wondered.

Something seemed to explode; the light changed and he felt hot glass scatter across his skin and a familiar keening in one ear that he wasn’t sure was real.

Green corrupted across his vision. His father appeared and disappeared in his view. He lashed out only to feel something cold, hard and cruel across the back of his head, sending him laughing against something equally unkind. The tile grain of the floor was antiseptic white, except where it stained with the copper of his blood. Was that from his head, or a gunshot wound?

Those tiles were rough, up close. They tasted like pine cleaner and the salt tang of calculated misery.

Like an uncharacteristic but satisfying spite.

“Hang on, son. I’ll have that bastard’s head especially--”

Benton cut off even his father as he turned and spat his own blood back at his assailants.


	169. ...fight...

“C'mon!! You saw it, you _saw_ it you motherfuckers, you fucking _saw it_ and you’re just gonna stand there and take it for some– some–”

Ray Kowalski was so mad that he could feel the blood pound through his body. Screaming. Shrill. Because somewhere, they had Ben and–

“FUCKING FIGHT!” he yelled at the top of his lungs. And he would, fucking hell he would, even though he could feel his arm half-numb where the butt of the assault rifle slammed into it, and he knew Vecchio would, even though he was sitting against the wall with Frannie’s underwear pressed to the side of his still-bleeding head, and he even knew Frannie would now that she’d decided, but the rest of these fuckers? The rest of these assholes just sitting there looking helpless and scared?!

“You survived the end of the world, you managed to make it this far, you had a fucking PLAN and you’re going to give it all up for some illusion that you’re safe here?! You are NOT fucking safe here! You will never be safe here! How long before they come for the women next, huh?! How long before they decide which of us is healthy enough to live and which ones aren’t? How fucking LONG?!”

“Shut up.” The woman looked exhausted. Elaine. She stood up, hollow eyes looking at Kowalski. “Just… shut the fuck up.”

“No. No, you fucking shut up, you fucking let them take her, you could have fought, you could have–!”

“Shut. Up.” She pushed him in the shoulder, making him wince, and then eyed the fence. “Let’s do this.”

The majority of the members of her group stared at her, eyes wide. Then, shaking like a leaf, the pregnant girl Trish stepped up. Her face was wet with tears.

Ray looked at her and shuddered, his own eyes stinging. God. God. Fuck. He had nothing. She was pregnant, and he hadn’t meant _her_ when he called for them to fucking fight, but there she was, scared and carrying a baby that was gonna be born soon and ready.

Frannie made a soft noise.

Then, one by one, the group got up. Ray panted, and he was so goddamn grateful when Vecchio stepped over, grateful for the couple moments he steadied the guy and gave himself a few seconds to breathe, and then he whirled around and grabbed hold of the chain link fence with such ferocity that the baby-faced guard with the assault rifle took a step back.

Ray bared his teeth, didn’t say a word, and started pulling and pushing and pulling and pushing, keeping his eyes on the son of a bitch while more and more hands joined him on the fence.


	170. ...same...

Sleeping under whatever they'd given her was impossible.

Whatever they'd bothered to throw at her for anesthetic, it wasn't enough. Not to sleep, not to escape the pain, not for anything. Audrey's wrist ticked back and forth in futility against the restraint. Leather and brutality.

The perfectly spaced cuts along her arm didn't bleed anymore; the coagulation speed of each had been photographed and recorded in another little space on that damn clipboard. The counter pattern of three identical burns still felt like fire, that recorded too, blistering and turning angry red at the edges. Her eyes had been tested over and over with bright, blinking lights once they'd carried away fluid of the vitreous for study. The dull fire still lingered from the spinal fluid extraction.

They'd shelved her. She didn't know why, only that they were preparing for something, and the room they'd left her in was cold. Other gurneys lined it. The strap across her forehead made it difficult to wrench her head to the side to look, but she managed. 

Mostly empty. Blood stained some of the gurneys, though. Some brown enough to be old, some still red, all of it repulsive. This is what they'd done after she'd left. It should not have shocked.

She spat. Not in disgust, though she would have; to clear more of the gauze from her mouth, to breathe, she had to breathe _in_.

It was then she realized she wasn't alone.

Audrey wrenched her head to the side to the sound of something whimpering, yanking a muscle in her neck only to see...

A man. Dark haired, grubby, young. Jerking in his restraints now that she seemed to have startled him, though not even to get away. Just, it seemed, to curl in on himself. He was bloodied. Split at the lip, the wound now healing, but still marking him. Others like hers. Surgical slices, burn patterns, bruises. His bite still stood out on his forearm, healing over like Audrey's.

They were the same.

"Wha-- Who are you?" Her voice was raked to a whisper.

The man whimpered again at the sound, moving against his restraint in the opposite direction. As though he could reach out instead. Hand flexing open and closed; somewhere along the line he had raked his fingernails back to the quick. He sounded like he was sniffing as he tried to breathe.

Audrey blinked away tears, enough to see him clearly for an instant. He had grey eyes. Full of terror. Heartbreak.

He was crying, too.

"I'm sorry." It came out rushed, almost manic, when she said it. "I'm sorry, I--"

Somewhere, a door slammed.


	171. ...broken...

\--white, hot light--

\--faceless things, pale blue and white over his body, nodding and speaking as though he weren't there--

\--black ink floating in the waters of the room, fluid ribbons, a weight on his chest--

\--his father's voice, _frightened_ and ranting at the blue-white figures who heard nothing--

\--needles in his skin, his back, his eyes--

 

Benton Fraser knew the half-mad pounding of his own heart, and the winds of nowhere shifting through the corridors of his own mind.

There was no motion. The straps bit into every limb, into his own _forehead_ , and his muscles long since burned to the point of fragility from running, from fleeing, from convulsions and from _fighting_.

The figures spoke to one another. Muffled, too damnably quiet and far away to understand. Gesturing at his arm - _infection_ \- as though it were a piece of machinery to be dismantled and studied, like a flawed part in a snowmobile engine. Bob Fraser screamed to the point that Fraser could make nothing out, only terror, only righteous anger, the shape of which was lost to the sound of his own weak, heartbroken laugh. His own voice raw in his throat, hindered from the screaming and the protests and the horror.

His father's voice reached frantic crescendo.

And then, in desperation, it was gone.

The drips of black in the room flooded to its center and took shape. Victoria's eyes were blood-shot and dead.

" _Ben_."

He tried to recoil; tried to answer the nausea and the goosebumps her sick presence left, but he couldn't. Two beautiful hands pressed to his cheeks, and she examined his face from the vantage of under his chin..

A blue figure took out a syringe. Fraser heard himself sob; just once. A sound escaping around the shock of something invaded his infected arm. Piercing; a pinch of sharp, and then liquid, coursing heat. A small thing. It should not have felt so violating.

Victoria began to hum. Off-key. Slow. Broken.

The figures - the _doctors_ \- settled instruments in a tray beside him.

His attacker with the needle seemed to check her watch.

 _"It isn't working,"_ fell somewhere into Victoria's song, as long fingernails raked lightly down his neck. 

Someone nodded. 

Someone else strapped his forearm more tightly-- until it hurt-- until--

\--Victoria sang, each note more melodious and clear as the doctors-- as they--

"No," he forced out through dry lips and aching throat, taking back some desperate measure of control of his own voice. " _Stop--_ "

Another note in the song bent sharp. His own sweat drenched him, his own tears rolled tracks down his cheeks. And he understood. 

\-- _dissection_ \--

 

" _Stop!_ "

 

\--something cut into his arm--

 

\--something in his heart broke--

 

\--something laughed, and something screamed--

 

\--Victoria sang. Benton bled.


	172. ...time...

Blood stained the snow red, like spilt wine drifting across a table, inevitably drifting toward the edge. 

Benton let it fall, trudging through snow under an alien sky. He followed the strange motion in the distance, his only ragged and beaten thought remaining was that of his broken compass. He had nothing else to follow. No emergency kit. No friends. No family. Just blood and a dying will to keep moving.

No tourniquet. Just a drip. Speckling crimson in a field of white.

He could feel his life leaving him with his blood. There was no way out of this place, and no fighting what happened outside of it.

Collapsing was peaceful. Somehow warm, despite the stabbing kiss of the snow against his exposed skin. Benton watched the sky, the dancing moons, and nightfall as it began to take over. The breeze stirred powder snow from the trees above him, and it was with that sting that she arrived.

Victoria’s fingers felt achingly good at his forehead.

“Hey,” she said, as if this were normal. She actually looked worried. Pained. Her eyes reflected the foreign moonlight just so to make her look like an angel of death.

“...hello,” he answered with a manic note, suddenly shivering. His heart was broken; he was in pieces. Benton searched her beautiful eyes

She smiled kindly. He waited for the razor teeth he was certain must be behind it to appear.

“Ben, it’s time. You have to come with me,” she said, as if it were the simplest thing in the universe.


	173. ...everyone...

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The beginning of Day seven.

The baby-faced guard had been easy to disarm; he hadn’t put up any fight and Ray thought maybe that was ‘cause he wasn’t ready to shoot healthy, living, uninfected people yet. Elaine had stalked past him, snatching the rifle out of his hands, and that was it.

Shame the rest of ‘em weren’t so easy.

They dodged and wove between forklifts and supplies, mowing down individual guards when they came across them. They didn’t have enough guns, but there was still a hesitation for both sides to fire on the actual living. Kowalski was like a madman, all twitchy intensity and wild blue eyes, and Ray woulda found that terrifying in any other situation, but in this one, he was grateful that neurotic basketcase was who he was. Because if it was Elaine who was doing the leading – and God, God, how she had changed, Ray almost didn’t recognize her– then it was Kowalski who was the driving force propelling these people, most of whom looked like they wanted to just lay down and rest.

And Ray got that. He got that real well.

He just wasn’t willing to do it without Benny and that poor blonde girl, who managed to not only survive the end of the world but the virus killing it. He wasn’t willing to consider it when the implications of the ‘help’ the military offered came at such a high cost.

“We need to get out of here and regroup,” Elaine said, assault rifle in hand, mouth verging on a snarl.

“How do you propose we do that?” Kowalski asked back, working his hand against the length of pipe he’d grabbed God-knows-where.

Elaine peeked around the corner of the section of crates they were all huddled behind, to the door down some hundred and fifty yards away. Then she turned back to them, eyes narrowed. “I cover you. You get everyone the hell down there.”

“You’re ‘everyone’ too, lady,” and Kowalski was snapping it off, too pissed, maybe too much over a whisper.

“No.” Elaine hoisted her rifle and got into Kowalski’s face, making Ray’s eyebrows shoot up his forehead. “I’m not arguing this. You’re the one who wanted a fight, so let’s get fighting.”

Without bothering with another word, she went around the corner and started firing; without hesitation, the group of people she’d kept alive so far followed her hand signal to make for that door.

Kowalski swore violently, then took the lead.


	174. ...whiskey...

The fact that it was dark outside didn't make anything _less_ ominous. Seemed like any second, something would start groaning in the shadows, if the guys with guns didn't get 'em first. When she was little, this was the kinda thing she mighta watched on television too young, hiding under the coffee table in the family room, fists stuffed in her mouth to muffle her squeaks. But she wouldn't have been _really_ scared 'cause Pop was way worse than any fake monsters on television, with bandages hanging off their arms and shuffling steps.

Fear to Frannie, growing up, was the smell of whiskey and cigar smoke and stale beer.

Fear to Frannie, the past few days, was the reflective glow of eyes too tall to belong to cats or dogs or deer.

Now, Frannie had long since passed the point of fear.

They managed to knock down a couple guards who had been running for backup, passed the guns along. Elaine shot one more, sprayed him down with gunfire like he'd been a zombie, and got them another. They were still pinned down, but this time--

Well, none of 'em knew how to work a tank, but right now, her brother and Kowalski were _in one_ trying to figure that out, while the rest of 'em used it and the trucks beside it as cover, and Reems, the vet guy, he was searching through those trucks for more guns and ammo.

"Two o'clock," Elaine said, and yeah, okay, it took Frannie a second but when she looked closer in the dark and shadows, she saw the group of guys trying to break towards the trucks to their side and aimed her stolen pistol at them while Elaine kept the rest backed off. She didn't think she hit any, but somewhere in the back of her head, she--

She didn't _care_ if she did.

She'd had enough of people telling her that she was safe.

And when she heard the motor on that tank come to life? Frannie _smiled._


	175. ...maelstrom...

Ben followed Victoria like a lost puppy, no more idea what to do with the afterlife than he had with how to cope with an eternity of limbless space where his hand had once been. He tied off the tourniquet with his teeth, coping with the most base, rational skills he knew. He grit his teeth every time his unsanitary hand brushed the ragged space where his arm became wounded void.

Victoria’s cold back was the alternative view. Lit up in otherworldly blue light.

“Where are you taking me?” His voice was shaky with pain and weakness. He didn’t feel dead. Like death, maybe, but not dead. The pain felt visceral; so did the abandonment. He wasn’t following her to join her so much as to figure out where the hell his father was.

To find out where his mother was. To find any answers at all.

Victoria was in his face so quickly that for an instant, Ben wasn’t sure he saw flesh on her bones. Her eyes seemed endlessly, cloyingly black.

“You tell me, Ben,” she whispered. For the whip-crack instant that she’d appeared, it was achingly gentle. She seemed to search his eyes as he looked into hers. “Heaven? Hell? What’s it like being with me? What do you believe in? What have you earned?”

Ben found her tone didn’t matter. His blood trail trickled to a close against his haphazard dressing as he took a large, wary step back and laughed another incredulous sound. “What?”

“She hardly seems like Saint Peter, does she, son?” Ben could’ve cried to hear his father’s voice. Bob Fraser looked as if he’d fought his way up all 30 floors of a sky scraper after a mischievous child had decided to press each floor on the elevator. Hat askew, clothes torn, and a bitten sort of anger on his face that said he’d fight to the bitter end and save one last spit for the spite of it.

“What’s happening, Dad?”

There was sudden blackness, oil-slick and angry, and it drowned out whatever his father might’ve said.

There was light, too, even without words Ben knew the light was somehow surprised with itself.

He was lost in it, fighting to find horizon in the maelstrom. Somewhere in between, Ben felt a beckoning. Familiar and grey.

Ben reached for it and held tightly.


	176. ...boom...

Dawn brought no comfort.

The base wasn't as strongly held as it had looked at first. Despite them not knowing how to fire it -- yet -- the tank had kept the military at bay, the confusion of the formerly captive civilians being armed and willing to fight back enough to trip whatever limited self-preservation instincts that the soldiers had. At least, that was what Elaine thought it was.

She didn't actually care enough to think too much on it.

They didn't fire the tank, but they did move it; backed the entire group up to the fence at the perimeter. Kowalski and Vecchio had already declared they weren't leaving without the half-zombie Mountie and hopefully Audrey McKenna, but they had done as Elaine ordered and got the civilians to the fenceline.

As quiet as it was right now, Elaine thought maybe the soldiers were ready to cut their losses. There were only so many bodies either side could afford, and she damn sure hoped it was clear to them that if they tried to take her group, her group would take as many of them with them as she could.

It felt otherwise like they'd hit a catch-22. Most of the guns they'd gathered were gone, and she sure as shit didn't want to depart this place on foot with just a tank that would only get so far before it needed refueled anyway.

She was conferring with Frannie -- of all the people she might have expected to step up as second command, Vecchio's sister would have been dead last until a few days ago -- about how they could get to the jeeps when her perimeter detail came up. "Uh-- we have some people coming towards us from _outside_."

"Zombies or soldiers?" Elaine asked, turning to pin the kid with a look.

"I don't think either."

She hiked an eyebrow, but then she and Frannie left the cover of the tank and headed to the fence.

Turned out the kid was right. The three figures moving across the grass towards the base were armed, but they weren't soldiers. Two men, a woman. One of the men was white-haired.

"Need a hand?" he asked, once they were in earshot, his deep voice booming in the morning air.


	177. ...rcmp...

“Sergeant Buck Frobisher. This is Constable Renfield Turnbull and Constable Maggie Mackenzie. RCMP.”

Ray stared at the unlikely trio, gaping. “You’ve gotta be fuckin’ kidding me.”

Even Vecchio snorted at that; rough as things had been lately, Vecchio hadn’t smiled in forever, but that introduction got one that was kind of disbelieving. “More Mounties. What, your compass get turned around?”

“We’re not kidding,” Turnbull said; he and the other one, Mackenzie, they were so young that Ray woulda pegged ‘em as rookies in another life.

“We’re here for Ben,” Frobisher added, calm as anything, not realizing how fucking _weird_ what he just said was. Ray was staring. Hell, _all_ of them were staring.

That was about all Vecchio needed to hear; his hands flew up, the chopped gestures of an agitated Italian-American gathering a full head of steam, voice going squeaky as he said, “What is this?! How the hell could you know about that? What, they issue you some kinda weird mental powers with those pumpkin pants? You got some kinda transmitter in your big hats?” Didn’t seem to matter to Vecchio that none of the Mounties were even wearing hats. “I swear, if you tell me it’s all just trackin’, I will pull off what’s left of my fine Italian leather shoe and _beat you with it_.”

Frobisher didn’t seem taken aback by the tirade. Turnbull, on the other hand, was watching with the corner of his mouth twitching up, maybe bemused, maybe amused. Mackenzie -- Christ, were her eyes _blue_ \-- just blinked in surprise.

Ray, though… maybe it was the days, maybe what had happened, who even knew, but out of everything that happened, hearing Vecchio rant and bluster made him feel better like nothing had done in a long time.

Like listening to a squeaky balding skinny cop lose his shit over the improbability of all of this righted something in the universe.

“Yes, well,” Frobisher said, after a moment, unperturbed. “We have a man to rescue.”

“And a woman,” Elaine added, the first time she had bothered speaking up.


	178. ...diefenbaker...

He woke in a cave, coiled next to a familiar heat.

The acoustics of water dripping off a stone were clear to Ben before the breathing in his ear. Perhaps it had been too long since anything had gone right, and that was why his mind refused to accept that.

_Diefenbaker._

Ben was dreaming, or dead. He didn’t know how long he had let the sleep-within-a-dream take him. Whatever this otherworldly nightmare was, its surreal quality was clearer to him under the familiar scent of his wolf. He laughed into warm, tactile fur, feeling like a boy reaching out for his father’s furs in the snow, breathing coming shallow through it. He felt a familiar lick to the top of his head; he pulled himself out to look at his lost friend.

Dief released a labored whuff by way of greeting, but Ben’s own was far less grim. It was elation. He stole what must’ve been an hour under that protection to simply pull himself apart and together again.

Shared pets and whimpers, tears and prim refusals that lapsed to rare acquiescence gave way to offering his bandaged stump to their shared grief. Was it real? It felt real. It hurt real.

Was any of this real?

The fire Benton found time to build, with help, came from scattered twigs left some long time ago in this place, but as Dief watched on, Benton knocked away one larger branch for a seat. Underneath was a bundle of old pages. Some blank. Some blurred, damaged, or burned. Some perfectly clear; scrawled with sharp handwriting. Others, scribbled with crayon and signed with a great big VM.

Benton looked up. Diefenbaker looked away.

The war outside raged on without them.


	179. ...invitation...

Turned out these pissants in uniform were pretty unprepared for a civilian assault.

The woman, Elaine, didn’t waste any time putting herself in command of the push-back. There were a few of her group who stayed behind, including the pregnant girl, but most of them seemed ready to follow her into any situation. Buck wasn’t one to get antsy about letting a woman take charge; he knew plenty of people in the good ole days who would take issue, but damned if he was going to be one.

They’d bashed out a plan based on what recon they had managed to gather from their escape, and the fact they had a tank at their disposal. They drew out an assault plan on newsprint and by the time an hour was up, it was time to move out.

Now, they were following a pissed off pair of yanks both named Ray, plowing a tank across the tarmac as fast as its governor would allow it to go, Buck having gotten a quick lesson from the blond one on how to drive the thing once they split off to go find Ben. Different small groups kept behind it, darting between it and other cover, firing to warn first. Turnbull had traded his pistol for a military rifle; Buck watched the boy pick a soldier off, kneecapping him, who made the mistake of trying to fire at ‘em. Good shot, given how fast the soldier had been moving.

They took his gun, but left him alive. Fact was, grim as all this was, no one wanted to shoot the living if they could help it.

Every heartbeat was dwindling hope that the world could survive. They kept going out, like the street lights of lost civilization.

Not all of it was death. Pockets of boys and girls, beleaguered and overwhelmed, dropped their guns and surrendered quick. Give Elaine this: she took their surrender, sending them in little clusters back to their impromptu holding area behind the truck depot.

“Ahead!” the yank girl, Frannie, shouted; she was pointing to a building that looked just that bit different. There were no markings on the door, but it looked like the kind of thing someone might stick over a much more important door to a much more important bunker.

Buck scaled the tank, wincing at his bum thigh, and hollered down into the pit of it. “Two o’clock!”

The balding Ray stood up out of the hatch; sweat was glistening on his head and his hands were shaking, but he managed to get a look and yell back. “Got it! Kowalski, you think you can make us an invitation?”

“Damn straight!” Kowalski yelled back. Damn fool sounded like he was on a rodeo bronco and not a tank, but Buck couldn’t complain. “Get everyone clear!”


	180. ...ambient...

The building exploded.

Once they buried the tank in it, backed the tank up again and turned it over to Frobisher, Ray and Kowalski scrambled out of the top hatch. Frannie had been spot-on -- and wasn't that a kicker! -- about this place, because there was an ominous looking doorway with an 'Authorized Personnel Only' sign in giant red letters, which led to a staircase _down_.

Ray's heart was hammering, but for the first time since the world had ended, he felt like he was actually really alive. Not waiting for the next horror, but determined to make sure there weren't gonna  _be_ any more horrors.

They'd already figured that whatever they were doing to Benny, it was probably gonna be ugly. That was why Reems, the vet, was with 'em. A decent guy; his hands shook around his borrowed pistol and he seemed scared half out of his skin, but he was right there with them with determination in his eyes, to get back the two who had been taken for whatever awful purpose.

"I got the lead," Kowalski said, practically on Ray's ear, and Ray nodded. He'd bring up the rear, they could keep the vet between 'em.

Going through that door was--

The _smell_ of it. Disinfectant, and a lot of it. That chemical, hospital smell that Ray knew from some bad arrests and his own occasional landing in it. Distantly, he heard someone _scream_. A man's voice, but it wasn't Benny's.

God. _God._

The staircase lights flickered, the fluorescent hum of them feeling like the worst kind of prelude to whatever was coming next. There were movies that started like this. Even after all he'd seen, Ray's skin was crawling.

Kowalski edged down the steps, gun at ready; Reems followed, and Ray went down and kept swinging back to keep an eye on their rears.

Despite the horror-flick style lighting and the ambient noise, though, nothing happened. No one jumped out at them. They got all the way to the bottom without incident. And it was a long ass staircase, too.

Above, he could hear the battle still going on, getting further away, more echoey as they went. Below, he didn't hear anything, but the smell got stronger and stronger. He didn't know what the fuck to feel when they were clustered at the bottom of the stairwell, peering into the dimly lit chamber beyond, wilfully ignoring the smear of something on the wired glass. Kowalski looked between them. Reems nodded, then Ray did.

Kowalski turned the door handle. They went in.


	181. ...cover...

A week ago, this mighta been a lab, but now--

It was a horror show.

Most of the bodies were covered in sheets, at least. But not all of them were in one piece. The things that got Ray was that there wasn’t no telling if these were zombies once or humans once; in death, they all looked the same. He could maybe take some guesses, but there wasn’t any sure thing.

When he saw the short-cropped blonde hair of a woman strapped to a table, his heart did that thing where it tried to exit his chest right out through his breastbone. Even though he knew it wasn’t her, couldn’t be her, his mind automatically answered, _Stella._

She wasn’t Stella.

Her name was Audrey McKenna, and Ray hadn’t talked to her when they were still in that cage; found her some kind of hopeful and terrifying, all at once, this woman who had been bitten, but who had recovered enough to be on her feet and coherent, whose eyes shone silver-blue when the light hit them just right. She had been _other_ then.

Now, something in him roared inside at the sight of her abused, tortured body and when she saw who had come, her eyes went wide and the tears started flowing anew. It didn’t matter to Ray anymore what color her eyes reflected. He started tearing the straps off, while Vecchio and Frobisher covered the door.

Reems was on the other side, mouth a wounded bow, helping Ray undo the straps and saying quivering, reassuring things. When Audrey sat up, she started sobbing, her whole body shaking, and Ray went and grabbed a clean blanket from the nearby haphazard pile to wrap around her. “We got you. Anyone tries to touch you again, we’ll blow them away.”

“The others--” she started, but when Ray looked, all he saw were other corpses. Dead corpses, not walking ones.

“They took Ben,” Ray said, once they had her wrapped up and on her feet. “You have any idea where they woulda taken him? Did you see him?”

“I didn’t see him, but I can help you find him,” she said, staring at one of the bodies not too far away, left uncovered. She clutched the blanket tighter around her body, shuddering once, then nodded for the door, leaning into the way Reems wrapped an arm around her like the person that she was.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Shattered Glass](https://archiveofourown.org/works/289117) by [Sossity](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sossity/pseuds/Sossity)
  * [Body and Blood](https://archiveofourown.org/works/368136) by [ButterflyGhost](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ButterflyGhost/pseuds/ButterflyGhost)
  * [Stella](https://archiveofourown.org/works/369468) by [ButterflyGhost](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ButterflyGhost/pseuds/ButterflyGhost)
  * [Cat's Eyes](https://archiveofourown.org/works/370515) by [ButterflyGhost](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ButterflyGhost/pseuds/ButterflyGhost)




End file.
